Lumina
by samrosey
Summary: All he thinks about is her, and what he sees when he's with her; the lines, colouring her special, he sees the fast paced stutter of her flowing beauty and he smells her, wants to taste her. She thinks college is awkward, like a test before the actual stuff happens. She doesn't know what he is. She just thinks he's a boy, as awkward as her. Vamps - AU - E/B.
1. Perpetual Crush

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

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**_Perpetual Crush_**

She sits and stares at her trinkets for most of class, she moves them, landing them in the light that comes from the big window, before finally painting them. I sit two tables back, watching her. Learning her moves. When we have Philosophy, she sits in the back because I once heard her say she would "just die" if she has to contribute. In French, she sits by my side, writing with her left hand, she mostly faces me and I can see everything from here, I can see what she writes and how she writes it; the cute little flowers she draws at the back of every paper. I can see her fingernails, sexy and pink. I can see her breasts; just asking me to touch them, though I know I can't. Her skin is creamy, strawberries and cream, as is her face, her cheeks are red sometimes and her eyes are really dark, almost black, like mine when I'm hungry. I see the lines, colouring her special, I see the fast paced stutter of her flowing beauty and I smell her. That scented sweetness she wears flies right into my nose during summer, though it doesn't cover that other scent. It doesn't mask the bitterness of her blood that I know is coursing through her.

All of what I see and what she is, can't and won't take away from the fact that she is human, and I am not.

-o-

I sometimes see him like, staring at me. Only when I look back, his eyes go wide and I don't know. It's like he's saying, "What are you fucking looking at, Swan?" So I _don't _look. At least, I _try _not to. Sometimes, he's just...there though, just leaning, or standing, with his hands in his pockets or, with the cuff of his sleeve covering his hand as he picks at something. Like, what does he think he's doing? Being all perfect and stuff. I tried to talk to him once but... Do you ever wish you could unsay things? Do you ever wish you could just unsay the garbage that comes out of your mouth? I think I ruined it. I think the next time I say something to him, it will be perfect and epic and it will end up in like, an embrace of some kind; two mouths crashing into one another in the most real way. That's what I want. That's what I think about most of the time. Even if we're here, in French class. Even if we're in the quad or he's a million miles away inside his mind. He'll finally know. And he'll see me. Bella.

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**_AN:_**

_Hello again! *waves and hides, peeking through fingers* _  
_So this is something new for me... vamps... first person POV. It's all here and I'm really excited to share it with you! Some chapters will be shorter, some will be longer, and even longer than that when the story picks up.  
Also, I have a schedule for the first time ever! Yep, I've written a good portion of this already and will be posting every Saturday, Tuesday and Thursday._

_Much thanks and sexy kisses to my boyfriend, bestie, and lover - known as The Boy from here on out - who pre-reads for me. (Find him here: inaweofchaos . tumblr . com)_

_You can find banners and news, etc on my blog, so please sign up! (samroseyfiction . wordpress . com)_

_I would love to know your thoughts/comments, so please don't be shy! _  
_Please and thank you! _  
_samrosey. xo_


	2. PreGame Tricks

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

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_**Pre-Game Tricks**_

Jasper told me he's getting better at being around them now. At being a functioning person instead of me having to babysit his ass all day. _I_ never found the thirst that restrictively overbearing, though it was ever present in my mind. I made a muzzle for myself in the way of certain medications. Still, even on the days I went without that sort of help, I never really felt the kind of pain he seems to constantly endure. Except now. Except for _then, _that day. That first day she sat next to me, I couldn't breathe. At first I thought it was simply _her_, her actual face - _she's perfect_ - perfectly soft, she sits tender and I felt like I couldn't breathe. And when she faced me and said something about the turtles smelling like a boys locker room, I knew. Because I could see something else; a painting, a tattooed deluge, spreading out and along, inundating me, pulling me to the very ground my feet couldn't move from. All across her face and down her arms, were just lines and vines of blood. And I wanted it. I wanted her perfect mouth, her perfect fucking fingers covered in pretty colours and I wanted to taste her. I _have _to taste her.

-o-

I don't so much like College; I like people. To watch them, to see their faces moving in funny and new ways, and their mouths saying words that don't always mean what they think. Because what is a word? And who made them? I watch all the teams at this school; I watch them practice, and I go to games. Mostly by myself but sometimes, sometimes Nettie and Rose will sit with me too. Surprisingly, Rose wants to be a cheerleader; for reasons she won't say but I think it's because of a boy. We don't talk about boys. Not really. She sometimes tells me about this guy in Cooking class who she always gets paired with but, he's always getting her to teach him stuff and I don't get it. So I watch people. And Nettie watches too. And we _do _talk about boys. But not _to _them. Not really.

The girls are my roommates, we live at _WV Three_. I didn't know them before I came here, and when I got assigned a room at the beginning of the school year, I walked in to find them dancing. Dancing to the _Spin Doctors _so loud that no words could be exchanged. Rose pulled me in and quickly jumped on the bed before Nettie put her arms around me and promptly began blowing raspberries on my face. They're a bit special, part crazy and they've been my best friends ever since. Rose comes from money, and is quite private about her feelings and well, about her stuff in general. Nettie is like a hippy, pulled straight from the seventies to now. She wears flowers in her hair and purple DM's, she paints and loves both boys and girls.

I haven't really told them about Edward but Nettie, she teases me about him. She sees me watching him, watching him at games, and she won't stop.

He doesn't play sports. I do see him at games though, with other guys and sometimes girls. He just sits on the hood of his car or they all go under the bleachers. I think they're smoking or maybe having sex or doing what freshman in college do. I want to see though. Like, watch. But if I go down there, they might make me have sex too. So I don't. I just wonder. And I try not to look when he's looking. Though I think he's only looking at my knee socks. Everybody looks at them. They're torn but I don't care. Yeah, he's looking at my socks.

-o-

I go to the party after the game because here at _WV_, there are, what some people would call, cool guys who will be in attendance. Well, they sell me pot and that makes them useful to me. That they also do this for others makes them cool, at least, I think that's how it works in this time, in this town. I tell myself I need the weed. I tell myself I need it so I can be relaxed when I'm around her. Jasper looks like he's getting fucked in the ass whenever he's around humans; or rather he looks like he's getting fucked in the ass and doesn't like it but well, on the contrary. I want the first time I can speak to her without wanting to rip her throat out to be...epic. Yeah, life size. I want it to be so we can't not look at each other when we speak. And she'll give into me. Give it all to me. I can do all the things I've been craving, and I won't be killing her and drinking her blood, messing up the place - her very essence blinding the sight of many.

She wears knees sock sometimes, ripped up knee socks in the bright colours she has adopted. They match her, they were made for her, and they're torn and sexy. I like it a lot. I wonder if maybe she knows I get high. I wonder if maybe she would get high too? I wonder if maybe we could fuck under the bleachers as the cheerleaders cheer and the football team scores their first goal. I wonder if she'll wear those socks tonight.

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_**AN:**_

_I thank The Boy, he pre-reads, making ways with his own set of pens. _

_________Next chapter: Thursday.  
_  
Your feedback is like getting to see Bella in her sexy pink socks!  
_Please and thank you!  
__samrosey. xo_


	3. Voracious

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

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_**Voracious**_

Looking at myself in the mirror, I can't stop thinking about the party, about him. The every which way we could meet with words, with touch. He would brush against me, bump into me maybe and we'd talk. He would see me and head straight for me, the first thing he thinks of. I sigh, lost in fantasy - Nettie begins to ask questions - reality grounding my daydreams; they crash heavy on the floor, and I sit back on the bean bag she ever so gladly acquired from a rummage at the all girls school downtown, it's comfy and real. But I don't want it, I don't want this. I want the broody boy I can't not see as he walks across campus. His eyes to the ground, lamenting in his own story, his own thoughts. What are they? Does he think of me? Imagine if he were to think of me, dress for me, because of me. I'm crazy with every which way he could see me, walk over to me; our worlds colliding.

Yep, this dress will do it. It's pink and black and mesh and cute and so I keep my knee socks on because they match. Who cares if they're ripped. My thighs are on show and I hope they play good music tonight. _WV Six _are known for good parties. Whatever that means. Nettie said we should go more; I like to dance, we can just go and dance, and get high. Though, I've only been to like, one party before and some guy Mark, or maybe it was Mike or something like that tried to touch me. He was so big, a big footballer, standing over me, talking about the win and then, well, he threw up on me. So I didn't want to go back. I didn't want to talk to all the forgettable Matt's of the world. But I do want to get high for the first time. And I do hope I get to see Edward tonight.

-o-

I'm so fucking high, I think I'm leaning against people. Just leaning against them. And the thing is, they don't tell me to stop. They don't even know me but what they see and what think they know about me tells them it's okay. If I was that guy - bulky and towering, drunk, and stifling others ability to just be - I would be looked at with contempt. I would be talked about, annihilating my quest to know her. For months, I've stayed on the outside. For months, I've tried to forget, all the while maintaining a sense of...mystery. It's what they want. The mystery. And so my very existence draws them in, creating a ready-made meal. It's for the taking. I could. All of them. Right now. A rampage, quick. Or not. A blood bath. Sexy sweet, the blood of my fellow freshman. But I won't. And so I don't. I just wait. I'm waiting for something else to happen because I'm so fucking high, I really can't do anything. The room and it's people are abstractly ideal, almost unreal, and this is perfect. If she comes in now, if she walks in right now, I won't be killing her. I won't be drinking her blood and she'll be okay. She'll be in French class tomorrow and I'll be cool. Fuck, I'm so fucking high. I'm thirsty, parched, my mouth is bone dry and I _need _to hunt.

"Brother, I _need _a drink." I know my eyes are wide. My immense high, obstructing any subtlety I may have once had, makes them wide so he knows I mean I need to feed.

"Now?" His eyes are wide too.

"Yes. _Now_. We _need _to leave."

I don't know what happened. I was supposed to be cool, this was supposed to be the now that we figure it out. But instead it's a now where I'm ravenous, my body exsiccated of it's supply. It has never felt like this before; I've done it a hundred times, and a hundred more than that. Maybe it's because I haven't hunted in a few days. Maybe it's because..._ she's here._

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_The Boy inspires me daily, oh and he pre-reads like a boss! _

_Next chapter: Saturday_

_I'm like a thirsty Edward; your thoughts are welcome, so come play! _  
_Please and thank you! _  
_samrosey. xo_


	4. Such Great Heights

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

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_**Such Great Heights**_

"I don't know. I'm hot. It's really fucking hot in here and maybe we should just leave." Nettie keeps brushing me off, but we've been looking for this guy all night. All the rooms, filled with all the people and this is way less interesting than I remember, than I imagined.

"It's okay, Bella. Eli told me he'd _be _here and this is where the stoners hang...what, _what_?"

I held onto her. Like, I might fall down. He was leaning on some girl. He was leaning on a girl I didn't know and he was smiling. His teeth are so perfect and white, and his mouth is doing something odd. Odd in like...my stomach hurts. My stomach hurts or maybe it's empty. I feel empty and weird and like I might fall down, so I'm holding onto her.

"What's with you? _Bella_, let go!"

Nettie's mad at me but it doesn't seem important. My world is in slow-motion. The moment's significance is tangible, and her annoyance seems utterly unimportant right now because...he's moving. The boy with the dirty-blond hair is with him. I always thought he seemed a little wired, and maybe kind of intriguing in a grungy Kurt Cobain kind of way - but he still pales in comparison to Edward. Now the boy is pulling him. He's pulling him up off the girl I don't know. The girl he was leaning on and they're moving towards us, right for us.

"I know you." He's waving his hand in front of me, he's speaking to me and I just freeze. My reality being so actual that my reactions are broken, or muffled perhaps, as if someone is covering my ears and he's telling me he knows me.

"You're Jasper, right?" Nettie is talking to the grungy boy and I still can't say anything. Rose just showed up and Jasper is supposed to take them to get weed. I may be on the precipice, about to fall into the foreign abyss of either fantastical imaginings come true or...not. I am smiling though. Smiling like, with teeth. And his teeth are so nice, I cover my mouth. I'm still holding onto Nettie, just her dress now, like a toddler. I'm a child and I can't let go. But she pulls away from me and it's just us. Just Edward.

"I know this girl." He says to Jasper, motioning after him as he's walking away. He's talking _about _me. _To _me. And _I'm_...nothing.

Nettie leaves. They all leave me with him, they go out onto the balcony with the other guy and I don't feel like I know what to do. Maybe it's too much. Maybe just thinking about talking to him is better than actually talking to him. Because that way, I can't say stupid stuff about turtles.

"Are you afraid of me?" He's looking at me, watching them leave and he looks upset. His eyes are dark and deep and sexy and I'm lost. But he's talking and he might be mad at me and I can't believe this is happening. "We _do _sit together."

I know.

My words don't come.

We do sit together. I am afraid.

He's mumbling and seems agitated, distracted by his own movements as people push past us. The room is beginning to fill up, the party is much more crowded now, and he's right there, his body closer to mine, I can almost touch him. If I want to, I can just reach out. I think he's trying to concentrate. He's definitely high and I think he's trying to concentrate on not falling down.

"I'm not afraid of you." I am. I am a little because even though I've sat next to him since September, even though I know he will always wear a black or blue t-shirt, jeans and boots, even though his hair is a brownish red and looks super soft, inviting my touch. He's new and I don't really know him except...this thing, this compelling attraction to his very being, his very presence is too much, too full and I have to say something before I explode.

"Did you have an allergic reaction?" _To me, maybe? _He's having an allergic reaction to me because I say dumb things and I'm wearing this super cute dress right now, and he didn't look down at me once. He's just fidgeting and...nothing.

"You smell better than those turtles." I'm dying and he's bringing up turtles. "_You_ smell pretty. And I, um..."

_I smell pretty. _

I'm dying and he knows. He finally gets it and I really might be something in the land of Edward. All this time, I thought maybe he thought I was weird for wearing ripped socks but he like, gets me.

_You smell pretty._

I'm smiling again. Only this time, he's holding my hand, the tips of his fingers to the tips of mine. The length of his cool skin along mine and I can't cover my mouth. Because. He's holding my hand. Edward fucking Cullen. Is holding my fucking hand and I'm high, all by myself I'm high yet crushed from the absolute realness, and it feels amazing.

"I got it, B." I hear her but... "Bella. Uh, I..." I think she's probably looking at Edward. Edward's not smiling anymore, he's kind of, he looks flustered and in a kind of...discomfort, maybe even pain. I'm so confused and his eyes are now more frenzied, like Jasper; wired. This is weird, right? I feel deflated now, no longer excitable, I'm exhausted, and I don't think I wanna smoke anymore.

"Um, ladies. We have to uh...go. Enjoy the blaze." Jasper pulls Edward away.

My hand is cold now. Like, I left it hanging out the window of the car too long. Like, the wind spent a while lapping at it and my hand is cold now. I'm heavy, my arms and my head, I feel heavy now, like I could sleep now. My hand is still cold and they're gone, they just left and I'm confused, we're walking across the green of the _WV Six _house, Nettie still wants to get high but I'm too busy holding my own hand. What just happened?

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**_AN: _**

_*peeks through fingers* Apologies for this being a day late, The Boy and I were gallivanting from Dusk till Dawn and I was a sleepy kitty when I got home. _

_As always - The Boy pre-reads, and lets me lie in the nook ::luffs:: _

_Your comments are like Edward holding your hand. He's like...holding your hand! _  
_Please and thank you!_  
_samrosey. xo_


	5. Boys Vs Girls

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

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_**Boys Vs Girls**_

Attempting to wrestle with my food whilst high was not the best idea I have come up with in over a hundred years, by any means. Jasper called Emmett, and I slumped against a tree as the rain fell a mess around my fucked up evening. I watched the leaves bob under the relentless precipitation, the pounding of the rainfall battering them time and time again. I sat surrounded by luscious dark greens and musty indecipherable blacks waiting for my brothers. We're fighting to survive, fighting on the side of humans. This is the only time. The only time I don't think of her, completely wrapped in who she might be. Except to wonder...could she ever want someone like me?

My rage is bubbling and I can no longer wait for any of this, for them to bring me what I need.

When they arrived, the savagery was over quickly. And though I would have liked more, Jasper cut me off before we could create any incidents in town. The family wouldn't approve so we left.

When we got back to _WV Six,_ there were students asleep on the green, students asleep in the halls, students staggering aimlessly, no doubt attempting their way home. But our room and my bed were a perfect pleasure after the confusion I was left with after the weird night I had. _I spoke to Bella._ I think I may have mentioned her scent, most certainly giving her an impression I'd rather she not have. _Her scent._ Not exactly a classic twentieth-century chase, that's for sure. I think it's safe to say I've muddied any proper first impressions. Made evident by this evening's events I'm all too aware of her effect on me. She was the reason I was so hungry. She was the reason I turned green, hooked up and bound. She wore a dress, sexy and alluring, though I tried not to look because she seemed afraid, nervous and unsure, so I took her hand, and Ifelt strong. In that moment, I felt the room get smaller, the colours disappear, the sounds drown out. I felt like we both might explode from the connection. It felt good, more so than I've ever known. It felt dangerous and new and I wanted to keep doing it_. _But I couldn't take the pressure after a few minutes. It got way too dangerous, being way too close to her, with that many humans in such a small space. It took everything, everything I had in me to not fucking drink from her. _I touched Bella. _Her wrist was painted with blood lines again, like it always is. Like she always is. I'm so hungry around her, I see it all. Rushing around. Pumping in tune, in time to my thirst. I couldn't look away. I wanted to drag her out of there and run away, across the green and out past the trees into the meadow and drink.

I have to start over.

I have to get a grip.

And I _have _to touch her again.

Tomorrow.

-o-

My head hurts and I think I ate too many marshmallows. Nettie and Rose took me into the woods to smoke. I'm not sure why, but we did and then we smoked probably only like half a joint between us and then we ate marshmallows and then we got creeped out. I could hear stuff, stuff you can't normally hear, I felt overwhelmed, and my perception was beginning to freak me out. I couldn't stop imagining a thousand spiders crawling all over me and they were laughing and I was hysterical with fear. We grabbed the marshmallows and ran.

Now my head hurts. And Nettie looks perfect. As always. Her face is round like mine, and she has green eyes, whereas mine are brown. She has light, wavy hair, and mine is dark and curly. She's tall, taller than me and almost angel like. She's so free, she's so brave. I wear my socks and worry all day that people care. She looks good and says she feels fine. My head hurts.

And we have class in an hour, she has Art and I have French. With Edward.

"Nettie. Um...what do you think like...I mean, if you like someone, how would you... How do I go about telling them, or finding out if they like me? You're like, a flirt. _I _wanna do that..."

She's giggling at my silly. She's crimping her hair, and giggling at my questions..

I feel a little juvenile asking but Edward held my hand, he held my hand. Whatever he thought, whatever he felt, I felt it. I feel it. And I think maybe if we were alone, he might have kissed me or something and I don't know...how do you know how to do the stuff you don't know before you know...you know?

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_**AN:** _

_As always - I thank The Boy; he keeps me in order. _

___Due to a new venture, (I just opened an Etsy shop) _I'm playing with the schedule a little. I hope you'll find me on the new days - **Next chapter: Friday. **

_Your thoughts and comments are as pleasant as Edward climbing into bed...naked. Come play!_  
_Please and thank you! _  
_samrosey. xo_


	6. Early Learning

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

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_**Early Learning **_

Before moving here, our attempts at settling in one place amounted to copious, mostly cold, mostly rainy, forest towns that are full of people constantly complaining about cold, mostly rainy, forest towns. This town is no different. Except it has Bella. All the other schools and all the other faces, too many, too little interest to care. Still, I managed to make a few friends along the way, even seeking the company of a girl or two. I saw it more of a test, more of an experiment, than me falling in love - I wanted to see if I _could _get close to people, testing myself and the parameters of what might be if I were to find the real _her_. If I could kiss them, have the strength not to devour them. If I could lie with them, and not want to suffocate them. If we could have sex, without me killing them. At the first try, I faulted, flawed due to my own impatience, my own excitement and motivations. I held her with a frightening strength, imprinting temporary marks upon her skin but leaving no permanent damage. Still, she fared well, and we hung out a few times after that. But there is no doubt in my mind, she was put off by what I can only assume she thought were some extreme kinks. The second time, and the second girl, was a much more improved and positive experience. She _was _kinky and preferred sex rather rough. I was fond of her, more than the first girl and she was my favourite. Until now. Until Bella. There is simply no comparison.

Up until a few years ago, we always lived with our parents, and then finally we decided to "graduate" high school. Since then we've attended three different colleges. Advancing to this step, and choosing to live at school, rather than with the family, is a much better fit for all of us.

Of my siblings, my brother Jasper and I made the decision to share a room. We're the closest even though he's the newest. Newest though he may be to the Cullen family, he had already contracted the demonic influence by the time he joined us. Basically, he had fangs, and hung out at blood banks. We grew close from the outset, him and I sharing a bond that has become one of my most valued. Along with Alice that is. Alice is our sister, younger than me, she's most quiet and shy; withdrawn due to the harsh reality of the _us _versus _them_. It took her a while to learn and accept Jasper's previous way of life. They're my family, my best friends, and though, they're fucking, her and I have our own thing. And it's just right. The right amount of right. She gets me with no complaints. They're special, the two of them and their idiosyncrasies, are what I call...sensitive to the outside world, sometimes too sensitive, all too open to the emotions of others, and the paths they choose.

As for school - I take a bunch of exasperating classes I don't care for and especially don't need, and they take all their classes together.

Before we came here, I never knew I could experience what they have. That kind of lust. I suppose with Bella being human, I am doubly craven. By her nature, by her blood.

I suppose she means something else now. I suppose I need to fucking do something now.

-o-

Nettie said I could test it out. Like, flirt with her and see if she likes it. I said why. How could she like it? She said she might like it. She told me about boys. She told me boys like it when you play with your hair. When you laugh a lot but only at things that make sense. She said they want to be able to make fun of you and it be okay. She said they like boobs and ass. She said I have to be prepared that they might only want my boobs and ass. So why waste time talking? I mean, if I wanted that. If I wanted to just be about the boobs and ass. "_Or dick and ass." _As she put it. Then why flirt and stuff? She said because only sluts give it away. And I'm not a slut. Am I? I don't know. What about romance? What about learning each other and kissing. And playing games and making jokes that both of us can find funny? She told me to just smile and nod if I get lost, show him some cleavage and he'll do the talking.

She said I could practice on her too. Like kissing. If I wanted to practice kissing before I kiss Edward.

I said I wasn't sure.

I said it might be weird.

My lips are a little red today. I used a tint. My eyes are wide and dark and I have my hair down. I'm wearing a long black skirt and boots. And my top is sorta low. It will do I think.

I feel good. I don't really feel nervous, I just want to know. I just want to feel what it's like being an actual person, one of those people who does things instead of just...looking.

I have to leave for French now.

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_**AN: **_

_The Boy makes me smile, and his pre-reading only makes this story better!  
__**Next chapter: Tuesday.** _

_A few of you loves asked me after last chapter's AN, what an Etsy shop is and where you can find the link to it. You can find it on my profile. Hope you enjoy! _

_Your thoughts and feedback are like hanging out at the blood bank on donation day! Gimme! _  
_And if you want to ask questions, feel free to come find me! _

_Please and thank you! _  
_samrosey. xo_


	7. What's My Line?

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

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_**What's My Line? **_

I'm afraid of the blood, her blood. The essence of everything I know, and crave - _need _to survive. Just simply and truly afraid. A talk with Jasper about what I see, and how she affects me when I'm near her, resulted in some unsatisfactory advice from my brother. He told me he has never experienced such a thing and that it's most likely a visceral reaction because of how I feel about her. That because I find her scent unique, the lust is multiplied. He said not to worry. I should continue on the medicinal path, and relax. Fuck him. _It is real_. I resolved to speak with Carlisle about the notion of a singer. I never gave much thought to it before. Not even knowing if I believe in it - the thought that someone could, with their very being, call out to me and only me - what reason would I have to believe in that? Over a hundred years, and no mate to be found. Not any real compelling connections that I later on found hard to break. _Nothing even coming close to how I see Bella._ The months of watching, learning, lusting. _Is Bella my singer?_ I still didn't know if that's possible, but a talk is necessary. Necessary if I want to get closer to her. Before we touched for the first time at the party, I would often convince myself it _wasn't _real - the visual effects of her pulling me in - because I really wasn't certain. Though now, I think maybe it was even there the first time I sat next to her. I think maybe I knew it _was _important, that _she _was important all along. The lines. The rushing, bursting blood of Bella.

Exasperation never trumps the excitement for me, the anticipation of what's to come the next time I see her, it's imminent, our next phase. I _have _to know her. More of her. I _have _to have her. All of her.

I think maybe Bella Swan might be the death of me.

-o-

"Can we start again?" He speaks. And I just nod. "Hello. I'm Edward Cullen. You're Bella." It's not a question. And I know his name. Does he think I don't know? Does he think I'm like, blind to his presence effecting my very life.

He said hello to me. Is this the start, the step before the step or is it the only step that really counts, ensuring we can reach all of the steps? Why not before? He was nervous too maybe...or maybe didn't even know me before, didn't notice me before. He knows my hand. And he's noticed my boobs. He _does _look at them. He also looks at my eyes and my arms though.

"Your turn." He speaks again. And his mouth is the most mouth I've ever wanted to see. I could look at it for a long time. I could want to have it and only it forever.

"Did you have fun at the party?" I ask - I don't know what else to say to him. Every moment has to lead to another. Another moment of him speaking and listening, wanting to be here. This is way harder than it looks on TV.

"It was...fine." He says it was fine. Fine meaning like, _good_, it was fun for him? Because I saw him with that girl and he looked more than fine. "Do you have oral today?" I turn as he turns and the black orange of the insides of my eyelids tries to block out the intense pain. His words ending up as both confusing and achy as I realise we've bumped heads.

It's weird now and he doesn't speak again. I'm just shocked and feeling bad for being so clumsy. He moved so fast...he flinched away from me and it was weird. His arms and his body are further away now, further than before. He looks...angry. "I didn't mean to... I'm sorry, I..." What I want to say is like, moving me. I feel horrible and after last night, I thought today would be different to all my other attempts. He would remember how it felt holding my hand and he would smile and we would both know. Maybe he'd ask me out on a date and I could proceed to mumble all night about how perfect he is and how much I have wanted this for months. Annoyed with myself, I can't help it, "Hey _sensitive_, meet _awkward_." I wave a wave with my hand and he doesn't laugh. Or even smile.

"Why would you say such a thing?" Yeah, he definitely looks pissed.

"It's not a big deal. It was an accident." I try to tell him, huffing out my words, impatient with my thoughts, I worry he thinks I'm annoyed with him. I don't know why I said that. I _am _nervous. And he's...silent.

"It's not you, _Bella_." My name is a song, falling from his lips. A morning song from one of the birds that sit outside my window.

"It's _not _me." I say it out loud, not asking, just repeating because I don't know if I really want to know. I just know he said it. And now it's out there, hanging in the middle of us.

"I wanted to apologise. Apologise for last night at the party. I was stoned out of my mind. I wanted to stay and talk to you - I had hoped you would come. And I want to talk to you now, and sit here with you. But... Bella, it's not as easy being-"

It was in this moment, I hoped J.J would die.

I hoped J.J would get sucked into the ground by the hellmouth. And I hoped Edward would forever tell me what he was about to tell me.

J.J is our French teacher and for some reason, he like, has turtles. Technically, they're baby terrapins and they're sorta cute and I sometimes even watch them as I practice the French words in my head. I don't get it though. This is college and his class is decorated the same way Mrs Cope decorated our class in grade school, and I don't know what the point is. Are we supposed to get the joke? J.J is here early and I wish he would not be. Because I _did _need to practice my oral today, _before _class, before now with Edward. But then Edward came. And now we're about to move into something I can actually hold and believe is real. It's all been so unspoken from the very first moment he sat next to me. His hair, a wild mess of rustic delight. His grey coat that I wanted to touch, soft material covering all that I longed to see. He never wore it again, but every time I think of him, fantasise about him, he's wearing it. He's always wearing it. You know, except for when he's not. I can't focus, I just want him to tell me, and for us to be able to say, "Hey, I like you. Can you be kissing me now?" _Can he just be kissing me now. _And this unspoken dance we've played a silent song to since September that is pulling at both of us, won't just be imaginary. Today I told myself I _would _ask him. Just ask him. I mean, you don't hold a persons hand, if you don't like...want to. Right?

But J.J is talking. And I'm screwed if I'm called to take the test today. I look at Edward. I try to look at him without being obvious but he is stony, straight-faced as he looks head on to the front of class as J.J waves his arms about. I think when I get the chance, I might tell him we smoked in the woods. And I definitely want to know about his eyes, they're so light today, they're so melty brown, coated in caramel - different than before. And I'll ask him why he got so weird when we accidentally bumped heads. And the smelling thing. I smell like fruit today, I wonder if he noticed - I used a new body butter type thing and... _I smell pretty._

* * *

**_AN: _**

_The Boy smells pretty too; sexy and sweet. I'm so thankful he wants to pre-read my crazy shit!  
**Next chapter: Friday**_

_You all make me smile with your feedback. I love sharing this with you. ::hearts::  
Please and thank you!  
samrosey. xo_


	8. Causal Nexus

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

* * *

_**Causal Nexus**_

I turned to look at her; smashing heads fast, her clumsy spilling out before us. She was too close and we connected. The fact that I didn't sense _how _close, only proves that she's an anomaly - not comparable to the others, eliciting a noticeable contrast and causing a difference within me when we're around each other. It's true, my senses _are _extraordinary when it comes to Bella - I can smell her before I see her, but the rest of the humans blend together, one barely distinguishable from the next these days. I always sense her when she's nearby, not just when she's next to me, at my side - looking at me, leaning into me ever so slightly as she poorly recites French phrases, her paper cluttered with similar English phrases that she tells herself she will translate at a later time. When we're in class, I'm smothered by her scent, and the plucking motion of my insides - invisible strings, tied to her wrists. And so I didn't sense her stumble because my perception of our internal connection is foremost and overwhelming whenever we're in such close proximity.

Colliding, I felt the side of her face and the pleasure of her soft skin - however brief - against mine. Ever present and _this _close - the flooding lifeblood racing towards me, the painted rushes of her insides. Am I insane now? Did all the animal blood make me substantially more sensitive to human blood again? No. It's _only _hers. It's only _her_.

Sweeping the class, it's clear. The faces I know - their voices are louder than the rest. That's the _only _difference I sense. Siobhan, Eli, the Professor. Nothing else discerns them. I don't know the rest of the students, and I struggle to muster any interest to - amongst their faceless ranks, I desire only one.

But Bella - I see her hungry eyes and her pouty mouth. Sulking because she thinks I don't want to be near her. That after last night, I was weird and now, even weirder. She assumes there's something wrong with me. And there really might be. Past the telltale fangs and the hidden demon residing within me.

I _have _to get out of here. I _have _to speak to Carlisle or perhaps go even higher, older - Alistair would know - and find out what the fuck is going on with me.

But Bella - I see her hungry eyes and her creamy skin. Made prey by the glorious taint of her own blood; my ravenous hunger a tribute to it's sanguine majesty.

This can't be right, it's too intense too soon. She should be freaking out, alarmed at my stalking of her in class; it's not subtle, in fact it's outright blatant. I'm not even inconspicuous in my focal points, as I stare intently at her face, her mouth, her curves, her legs. If it is right, if she is my singer and we're pulled by the same hands, to the same well to drink, I'll gladly take the first sip. I'll gladly drink. This thirst commanding me, confining me to her, I would gladly drink and move and dance, and have and want. Still, I must be prepared before we move. Before we move together and I break her, delicate and warm to my cold and hard. What about the lines painted across her skin, and the sounds of her racing towards me, is this a part of it? When we touch, however short and sweet, it'salarming to _me_. There's a power there that _I'm _not even sure I can handle. _I need to leave._ I need to be gone, at once, be with the family and find some answers.

Silently asking me for those very answers, facing me once more as J.J drones on about his damn turtles. _This is French class._ This is French class and we should be taking an oral examination right now. In lieu of the answers I can't yet begin to give, I dig around for something to savour whatever it is she sees in me.

"I've decided to leave, ditch class. I have important matters to take care of instead. I'll come find you later, and we'll talk. Or we can practice for the oral exam, if you'd prefer - he won't call us today, we have time." Just one touch. One brush of her hand with my fingertips and she'll know my sincerity. She seemed to like it very much when I held her hand at the party - residual effects, _if any,_ aside. "Forgive me." Ever so precisely, definitively, in this light, on this day, my skin to hers, sight seeing all that I am hungry for, held fast, we're connecting, connected in the best way. Crashing into each other once more, without the clumsy, without the frustration. She's warm, smiling. She's warm and I'm crashing fast, high above this room, these people, this notion that it somehow isn't right between us. And to think, this is just one beat in the pulsing heart of Bella. One beat, before the sound of drums that would be more, more hands, more flesh, my mouth on her pink, sweet - I'd have it all. I've waited for it. I've seen her face and heard her words, soft, sexy words, and I'll wait no more. I'm here, I'm in, and I'm ready to make this real.

"God, I hope he doesn't call us, I didn't practice like, at all." She's rambling about J.J., who cares? Don't you feel this? Maybe this _is _too much for her. Should I let go? I won't. _Not yet. _She seems spacey, must be nerves. Is she coping with her nerves, is that what I can attribute her nonchalance to? One thing I do know - I'm hungry. I will have to hunt, and maybe come prepared with other provisions next time. The sound of her heart is so loud, the sound of her heart pounding a rhythm against her chest, against my palm is flying, fast flying, not ceasing in this moment to shake me, make me. "But I'd like to talk...some more...do this...some more." I'm pleased by her response, as I squeeze assurance, our hands under the table, between us. I'm pleased at how I affect her, from the blush upon her cheeks, to the resounding song of her heart next to what she thinks is mine. "Edward..." Her fingers move inside my holding, as she eyes me, questioning, _again_. But I don't know these questions, so how can I begin to answer? A translucent pale, I see before me, from her usual creamy pink pale; she is sickly affected, suddenly sickly affected? I squeeze her fingers, attempting to know in ways I can't possibly know without her voice because she stopped speaking, stopped answering me and and her eyes are no longer as hungry as mine; the eager dusk of the almost black I see when she looks at me, gone. She looks tired. And all I feel is..._everything_. All at once..._everything_. I'm powerful, feeding off this lust as she shifts in plain sight - I can do anything with this, anything with her touch on mine. She's magnificent and I don't want to leave. But she looks...not at all like the Bella I've come to crave. "Bella? Bella!"

-o-

Edward said he wanted to talk. Edward said we could practice for our oral French quiz, but I couldn't help but think of his mouth and what it will be like when our tongues touch. One minute he was right there, looking at me, being into me. And the next he was looking around the room, like he wanted to be away from me. I tried to say something and he touched my hand again, holding it to him, instead of out in front of him. At first it was just nice, more than nice, amazing even, and better than last night because here, in the daylight, it felt more real somehow. His fingers are longer than mine, colder than mine. The tips of his fingers lined the tips of mine, his thumb along my nails, my pink nails. And I got lost right there in a moment of something almost too real because I became dizzy. Even if in this setting - in class rather than at the party - the potential for handling it all is greater this time. And I _was_ handling it just fine. His fingers became a whole hand and he took me, he took me hard. Crushing me. He was like, completely crushing my fucking hand and I was frozen with the dizzy. This was too much, _is _too much and I couldn't tell him to stop or ask him why he was holding on so tight, because I couldn't speak. I was so taken by it, I couldn't move my legs to get up, or leave. I think I really might want to leave but I can't move my legs now and he's really fucking crushing my hand. I feel sick, nauseous and afraid. Most definitely afraid now. And I'm tired now. I think I might just rest my eyes now. I think maybe Edward will let go then, and I don't have to find the words from my disappearing voice, from my disappearing world.

* * *

**_AN: _**

_The Boy works his words and ways through mine. It feels good. I thank him much. I thank him plenty. _  
**_Next chapter: Tuesday_**

_It's a slow burn, my loves. I hope you put your seat belt on! _

_Your thoughts and comments are like Edward wanting to practice oral...  
__Please and thank you!  
__samrosey. xo_


	9. Complications

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

* * *

_**Complications**_

Her eyes, dark and dying, were no longer voracious for me, but instead for the light and the understanding of this madness, closed at a rate of a thousand blinks. Her hands, the ones I've held onto for new life, clung to the table's edge. She was gone.

Now on the floor, I sit beside her warmth, and even still I feel the something that brought us here, to this moment. Utter silence at the sight of her - no forethought in my mind, no deliberation, and no precaution for my secrets - for the first time in a long time, I have no idea what's about to happen. No blue existence chasing a red one. No dejection from losing the life I sought with real despair now so close in hand. Nothing but fear. Fear not for me, or for them - the humans clambering for gossip - but for her. For Bella. Lying asleep, hanging on somewhere inside for her prince to rescue her. Is that me? Could I have been her prince? Would a kiss upon her lips awake her? In place of protection, I harmed. In place of courtship, I ordered, ordering our connection, determining our destiny, her destiny and an existence with me. I should have known the demon would win. I should have known not to get too close. She was special, _is _special. This can't be it.

"Do not touch her!"

"Bro, she totally passed out. We should call someone." The faceless voice, echoing emphatic, insists on my must, yet feels so far from here in my fast approaching suffocation.

"I said, don't fucking touch her. _Phone._" I hold out my hand, three are offered. I take one, I call Carlisle. I tell him to be at the house.

I telephone Jasper - _I can't touch her_. She's poisoned, possibly dying. This soft spoken awkward girl who it seems like I just met is now broken in ways I don't yet understand, and I can't even touch her, let alone possess her in all of the ways I've dreamt of for what seems to be a thousand years.

Jasper arrives quickly. He carries her. Because I...can't. I drive as he eyes me, speculatory. I eye him back. This pain a throbbing manifestation of all that's lead up to now. He attempts to discern the cause as he exerts his ability to reign in my emotions from what has just occurred. I don't accept his _gift_. _I _did this, and so fully deserve to feel it.

Bella's head rests in his lap, and I only pray to whatever God, whatever Almighty, Divine Being, up in whatever Heaven is popular today, that this gift of Jasper's, is soothing her, relieving her of any pain I may have caused.

She's out cold. Sleeping through whatever nightmares I have bestowed. But there's life, for now. I hear her breathing and it's my only reason to live.

"What the fuck did you do, man?"

"_Don't._ Okay, Jasper. I told you about this. I told you I wasn't high, that this wasn't a trick of the mind. This fucking mess, it's real. It's _all _real, _too _real, and now look. _Look at her!_ So just, please..._don't_."

I drive my car, carrying her delicate fleeting life, faster than I should.

We arrive at the family home. I'm unprepared for their silence.

Esme comes out first. Emmett and Carlisle follow. Alice stands in the doorway, observing. Of all the things she claims to see, not this? Why didn't she see this?

"Mom, I didn't know..."

"It's alright, Edward. Let your father look at her." Concern. I read well. She is a force and I am accountable.

"Carlisle." He doesn't look at me. "_Dad, I..._"

"Go inside with your mother." That's it. That's all he says.

-o-

Silver trays lined with metal instruments I don't know the name of. Beeping. A sort of beeping in my ear trying to wake me up. Soothing touches, like someone touching me cold and soft. Really, really soft, like whispers. Voices, and hushed sounds of someone trying to hide from me. Or maybe I'm hiding from them. I still feel heavy, but good. I think I'm floating. More soothing touches, like someone's fingers along my skin, still cold and soft, only this time, the whispers are words, and he speaks and I think I know that voice.

"...but it was just a minute, just minutes. Still it felt instant, the strength, the power."

"Is this the effect of a singer?"

"...her blood. The lines, you really don't see them?"

Broken stories, I'm sort of awake now, listening to broken stories.

"Edward, this is dangerous. You _have _to be careful with her. Think of the damage."

Edward's here? Edward's here and there's danger?

"But she's my only..._"_

It went quiet again.

"She's awake. Get Dad. Jasper! Shut up and get Carlisle!"

I don't even...

"Bella? Bella... It's Edward. You're okay. Can you say something? Anything."

"Can I...water?"

"I'm sorry, Bella. I'm so sorry.I did this. I held on too long and I...shouldn't have even..."

He hands me water and I don't know what he's saying. Did I pass out from the pain? He really hurt my hand. But my hand is...fine now? I don't feel it anymore.

The water is warm. "I don't understand. Edward, you hurt me...why did you do that?"

He kind of looks like he doesn't understand my question. I wish I knew how to do this. He seems super strong, I think I was just overwhelmed, I was so nervous. I think I overreacted. I think maybe he was just overwhelmed, like me. Maybe he just wanted it for so long, like me. Something happened, it might be bad, really bad, and I can't stop the twirly feeling. I'm all a flurry, full of wanting him near me, wanting him touching me some more. I feel like I've known him, like I know him and I'm just waiting for permission to unlock all the secrets to who we can be.

"I didn't mean to. I wasn't aware of your...our... It appears that when we touch there's a... _Bella_... I would _never _hurt you. I would never knowingly hurt you, you _have _to know that. I hope you see that. I only hope you'll forgive me."

"I'm so tired, Edward. I _just_... What's going on?" It feels like a dream. Wake me up! Wake me up, already!

"Edward." A man comes into the room, interrupting us. I had to ask, didn't I? After this, after class. Now I'm on a fucking table, and I have no idea what's going on in this strange room in a strange place away from campus, away from home.

The man stops. He waits for Edward to move.

He has blonde hair. He has like, the same eyes as Edward, except they're Edward's eyes only on some days. Some days Edward's eyes seem really dark, the same as mine. But now, they're back to a burning brown aurus, just looking at me, learning me.

The man has blonde hair and he's looking at me. He's holding his fingers pressed to me now and I don't know who he is.

"What did I do?"

"You fainted. Most likely from dehydration." The man is soft spoken, he's like a teacher. Or my dad. He's so final.

"So I didn't vomit?"

"No, you didn't."

"Why am I here, and not a hospital?"

"Edward didn't want you to have to wait in the emergency room, and I was home, so he brought you here for me to look over. You're fine now. Drink your water and then my wife will take you home."

"Your wife?"

"Bella, this is my Father." Edward stands next to the blonde man, they're father and son now and I can see it clearly. He brought me here to his dad, his dad who's...a doctor?

The room we're in is dark, there are grey partitions against the window blocking the light. Would there even be any light? I have no idea what time it is. I have no idea where I am in this town. One wall covered in shelves of books, and cabinets of jars, and here in the middle, trays with medical equipment all in a row. And my hand. My left hand, not the hand that Edward held, not the hand that is currently bruised and swollen and ugly looking, has a needle thing sticking out of it.

"Just procedure." The blonde man says. So final.

Did they take my blood?

He takes it out, and Edward looks at me. He's like, looking at me how he was looking at me when we were at the party, like when we were in class - worried but not nuts this time.

"Will _you _drive me? Please?" I don't know these people. But I know Edward. I think. And in this moment, right now. It's all I want. And he's all I know, however little.

The blonde man looks at Edward. They don't speak. It's all really weird and I still don't really understand.

"Yes." He says to me. "I'll drive you."

* * *

**_AN:_**

_The Boy takes out time from his own stories (inaweofchaos . tumblr . com) to pre-read mine. He's the best!  
**Next chapters: Saturday, then Wednesday** _

_Slow burn, I'll say - It's a process, filtering the ways, letting out whispers of information little by little. ****__Are you still with me, loves?_

___Your comments and thoughts are like waking up to Edward. However weird and confusing it may be... Let's figure it out together!  
Please and thank you!  
samrosey. xo_


	10. Confessions Meet Theory

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

* * *

**_Confessions Meet Theory_**

The wait while she lay sleeping was horrific, caught between the twisted desire to devour her - she was dying anyway - to holding her, fingers ghosting along her face and whispering tales of a happy ever after. But Carlisle said she wasn't dying. He informed me of something far more terrible - imagine sucking the very life from someone, draining them - not unlike actually drinking from them - that's what I did. When I held onto her hand in class, I sucked the life from her, weakening her, causing her to pass out. How is that possible? From grasping that vision comes acceptance as I am all too aware of my thirst for her blood in this very moment, and of her scent surrounding me - senses unmatchable to any other, and the beats of her heart following the lines of her life. I see them, even now, they are alive and creating. So yes, it is all _too _possible.

Carlisle was short and dismissive, and I didn't appreciate it. He was the one who wanted me to make friends, who said we can integrate perfectly well here. Evidently not. Is he holding out hopes I will travel the road all too familiar? Take a wife, _make _a wife? Is that the only solace I have?

I agreed to drive Bella. In the same car as me, in the very seat next to me. But as I try to help her with her seatbelt, Jasper pushes me out of the way before I can touch her arm. Right, no touching.

"Thanks, brother. I owe you."

"Don't beat yourself up. It's not like we could've have prevented this. How could we know? Just get her home quickly, we'll be waiting..." From the time we got to the house with a sleeping Bella, to now as I'm leaving with her, Jasper's attempts to soothe me both with words and the unseeing, were for nothing. I didn't feel at ease at all, at any moment, as she was in pain...because of me.

This is the longest car ride of my life. _And I don't sleep._ She sits there deliberating her first move, guessing the answer, contemplating the outcome of this. She sits there worrying her fingernails into each other, pulling at the end of her skirt. I see the changes, the movements, the phases. Curious. Anxious. Displeased. Nervous. Upset. Enraged. She has questions. This will be interesting.

"Thank you for taking me to your dad...a doctor, huh? I don't usually pass out like that from...I mean, I don't actually think it was because of you, even if it did hurt like hell. I felt like crap all morning."

"It was me."

"No, really. I..." She looks embarrassed. She needn't be and I wish she knew how much I wanted to learn everything about her, stop the car and spend lifetime after lifetime finding out. "I got high last night...for the _first _time."

She thinks it was a side effect, some kind of hangover due to the marijuana. She's has no idea, brand new. I should probably agree with her notion, but I would rather not lie any more than I have to.

"I didn't drink or anything, we just ate junk food. And then we fell asleep on the floor in the bathroom, against the tub." She's muttering under her breath. Something about "God. Fucking God." What does _he _know? Why would he devise this between us?

I know why. Because I'm a demon and she is...magnificent.

"It wasn't dehydration, Bella."

"What?"

"You should stay away from me." I should stay away from _her_.

"Why?" Her face shows me hurt once more. Like a prison I'm confined to, with only the image of her face, sullen and sad, pained and fuming.

"I'm bad for you. Don't you see, look at you. You're a mess because of me."

"I passed out. It's not a big deal." Pouting a sulk, wet lips and big eyes. A prison inside this car."Please don't say that...don't pretend with me. I know you felt it today. I know you look at me, I know you watch me in the attic at school. I passed out. _End of story._"

"We can't be together, Bella." I hate this. I hate this with all of my being. It's excessive and dizzying. But I have to. I'm bad for her. Extremely. Bad. "What do you want? You want to go on dates? Have me hold your hand at the movies? We all know how that goes. I wouldn't be able to kiss you at the end of the night. I wouldn't be able to hold you. We can't do this. I can't do this. _End of story._"

"No. I refuse your end. I refuse your crappy excuses. Look. Look at my hand, Edward. And I'm still here. Do I think you did this on purpose? No. Do I think you'll be more careful? Yes. Do I know anything past right now? Not at all. And neither do you. Maybe _I'm _bad for _you_. Maybe _you _should stay away from _me_, huh? Yeah, I didn't think so."

She knows I see her. Painting boxes at school, pretty trinkets in rooms where she's not meant to go. Could I give her up? The prettiest images I've seen in years upon years. Yeah, I don't think so.

"You don't know what you're saying, Bella."

"Neither do you." She huffs, and crosses her arms. But she can't. It hurts too much. I did that. _We can't do this. _"You like me." She speaks it with such conviction. She knows it's fact. She knows we can't go back. It's not a question. And I do. Very much. But we _can't _do this.

"Why do you do that?" Because I'm a monster.

"What?" I snap at her. I have no right.

"You tell me you can't tell me things...except all the reasons why not. You like me, you said. But you're not good for me."

"I'm _not _good for you."

"What makes you so bad?"

"I crushed your hand." I would kill her. I'm sure of it. More and more, I know I would learn her moves, learn her sounds - a singer I cannot see. How can I love, when her blood pumps through her own, straight to me? Making love, not ever. She would be my hunt. My food. My game. And only that.

"By accident." She doesn't know, it makes no difference. Next time wouldn't be an accident.

"An accident this time. You're more delicate than you realise. I'm not."

"So you're saying if we do this, you'll break me?"

"Something to that effect. Yes."

"No. You won't. How dare you!" Affronted, she eyes me, like weapons, they could kill. Maybe I deserve it.

"I most certainly will."

"_You'll break me._ I have a choice, don't I?"

"You do. But I'm choosing my side. And my side says I'm not the one for you."

"So you don't want me?"

"Do you know how you sound? We don't know each other, Bella. You know nothing about me and I know...I don't know why you live on campus when your house is eight minutes from school, I'm unaware of your social needs and I've never seen you eat."

"I _eat_. I've never seen _you _eat."

"Exactly."

"What does that even mean?" I eat animals. I hunt them as if I am one of them. I drink blood. I have consumed human blood. I would gladly drink your blood. This moment, and I know there would be more moments, swiftly urges me to take you. Have you. Bite into your skin, flesh of just another animal. I could.

I don't answer her. I just drive until she points up the street, "That's me, the red door." I drop her at home, her family home, and I wonder about the people inside. Her caretakers. Her bedroom. Her bed.

"Thanks for the ride. And the bruised hand. And you know, the mess that is the inside of my head. Weirdly, I thought we could be friends at least."

I don't respond. Again. I walk her to the door. On the steps, I stay below her. I need to keep myself from reaching out. Fight myself from grabbing her and running. I do want the chance to know her, and see. How can we end this before it's even begun?

She pushes her dark hair behind her ear, a curl popping out from behind it, unwilling to be held back. I want to hold it in place, have my fingers upon her cheek. She licks her lips. He pale lips to meet her pale face. She looks down at me, waiting for me.

"I'm not good for you, Bella. I can't tell you why, just know that it's true, and that despite my pushing, you're not imagining this. Just know that if I could tell you everything, I would. Just know that I want to say hello to you every day, hold your hand as we walk to class, and find out why you make those little boxes. Why you go to games by yourself and if you've ever thought of me too. But I can't. I'm sorry you're hurt. I'm sorry _I _hurt you."

Her lips tremble, the rims of her eyes red and ready to weep.

"I might not be in class when you get back." I tell her.

The tears are full and heavy, rolling down her face. Her hand, a square bandage taped across the back of her palm, swipes them away as she turns to face away from me. And I'm phasing. Phasing from the life I've been living to the one I've been afraid of. If I killed, I'd be killing. If I slept, I'd be longing for the sweet suffocation of dreams, and if I were human, we could have this, and I wouldn't feel so mad.

"I'm sorry, Bella."

-o-

I left her crying on the doorstep to her family home. She would go in and all two-point-four of them, would worry and coddle her and she will be fine. When she arrives back at school, she might miss me for the first class or two. But she'll be fine. This never really began.

The house is quiet when I enter, the family sit in the great room, awaiting me and my explanation. Bella was out for only sixty minutes or so and that whole time, I avoided Carlisle, or rather, he avoided me. Esme made up the guest room in case Bella couldn't go home yet. Alice stood in the corner watching everything while Emmett went to get supplies, and Jasper was his usual, patient, supportive self.

Now, they all have different faces. Jasper's is apologetic. As if he's been fighting my cause. Alice, doused in melancholy, sits next to him, hands in her lap. She wears an ivory lace dress, contrasting with her raven hair. She is barefoot and gentle. I wish her, Jasper and I could leave. I wish I didn't have to face this. but I do need answers.

"Son. Join us." Carlisle, more regal than ever. Blue neckerchief tucked into his grey sweater. Blond hair slicked back. A sharp stare, mirroring my own. _He made me._ He makes me still.

"Did you speak with Alistair in my absence?" He was to ask about singers, find out anything new. Anything pertaining to the life sucking that occurred today. _I'm doomed._

"I trust Bella got home safely." Esme speaks. And her voice is a blanket wrapping around my insides, warming my cold heart, bringing me to life. _She is my mother. _She is our keeper.

"Of course. I said goodbye. And I'll cease enrolment at _WV_ from here on out."

"In light of the information I've been given, I would say that's for the best." Carlisle stands.

"And the variables?" It's all the hope I have left. I'm waiting only for the solution, then this need to run, run to her house and begin this for real will consume me, is already beginning to consume me.

"I'm afraid there are none. I'm afraid the fairytales of a singer have been much exaggerated over the years."

"How so?" I stand too, begging him to say something else, digging deeper to find something new, anything that will change this.

"Her blood calls to you for a reason. A very good one. She's..."

"She's your freaking well, man. Your ultimate drug. Your very own blood bank." Emmett's deep voice resonates, filling the room, rumbling.

"Emmett!" Esme scolds him. "Bella means something to you." It's not a question - my dear mother, utterly correct as always.

"She does." She _could_. I wish she could mean something other than this, this _almost_, this _not close enough_, this _too far away_. This girl. She _does_.

"How far have you gone, Edward? I can't see." I roll my eyes at Alice.

"And what would you see? Lovers in spring time, frolicking in the sun."

"_Sparkles and all._ Don't be sour, Edward." I didn't get one of these _gifts_ they speak of and I've never known a vampire to meet his singer. Ridiculous. All of it.

"It's new. I ended it." And watched her cry. Dejected. Rejected. All before I could even taste her. My mouth, on her mouth. Just once. Not even once.

"But you don't want to end it." Ah, my mother. Readers, we. "You don't think you can keep it up."

"No. I don't. But what choice do I have?" Give me choices. Somebody. _Anything_.

The room is silent again. I close my eyes and wish once more for sleep. I see hungry eyes watching me, her smiling face above me. She dances, her arms out, her skirt spinning. She falls giggling, against me. Her body pushes to mine. Her fingers sweep my face. Her lips brush mine.

I'm done.

This is too much.

* * *

**_AN: _**

_The Boy is beautiful. He makes me spin, much like Edward makes Bella spin. _  
**_Next chapter: Wednesday_**

_Lots of Edward, some more Cullens. Some answers, and some new questions._

_I hope you enjoyed it! Your thoughts and comments are like riding in cars with boys! _  
_Please and thank you! _  
_samrosey. xo_


	11. Balancing Stories

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

* * *

**_Balancing Stories_**

My mom just looked at me with concern, you know, if concern looks like blame. Blame for messing up their _"free time."_ I imagine her welcome home as_"Why must you do this to yourself?" _and her longing for me to be gone, out of sight, out of mind, as_"This was supposed to be the time we get to do the stuff we missed out on." _All while we sit at the dinner table as nobody speaks. Dad kind of just acts like it's not a big deal because, I think, it's really probably not to him. He knows my mom will worry enough for the both of them and he is more the... _"It'll all work out."_ parent.

I stab at the green peas on my plate for the second time. I look down at both of my hands and _uh_, what a fucking mess. I look at the both of them and realise, I look nothing like them. Not really. I have my dad's dark eyes, while my mom's are a hazel green. He has dark hair, an olive complexion, and a full beard covering his smile, fluffy and mysterious - not at all like his personality. My mom is light-haired, pale with freckles, and pretty. An obvious pretty. She has long curly hair, like mine but not really, because I look nothing like them.

My room is like, _home _again. Home again in the most seriously safe way. I am one hundred percent present to the fact that it's all _mine_. But it's not _me_. And I miss Nettie and Rose, and our room at _WV_.

The walls here are a creamy purple-and-yellow-mix of a child I no longer am and the frames on the wall depict people I don't know anymore. There are frank reasons why I didn't take them with me and it has been an age since I listened to any of the music that sits on the shelves next to my TV. My yellow TV - matching the flowers that run around the light on the ceiling - that I was so excited to get three years ago. Dad told me all the stuff I could do to hook it up to my stereo, rambling about cables and buttons I knew I'd forget as soon as he stopped talking, while mom mumbled something about "_Well that's it, Charlie. We'll never see her now; when she's not out at the Res, she'll be in here blasting MTV." _She has always been so confusing, a perfect mix of resentment and over protectiveness. My bedroom was my box. My big box of safe ways to hide. And when I wasn't here, well...I don't have that other place anymore either.

Whenever my mom gets flustered, she causes a fuss and we argue. My dad will always attempt to calm her, to contain the rage - he doesn't do stress well - thirty seconds, a shake of his head, two hands either side of her shoulders, _"Renee, you have to let it happen. It'll all be okay. Come on now, don't go missing the good parts."_

The good parts.

The good parts they don't actually get to live _with _me. The good parts I make at _WV _with my new friends, that aren't all that present...most of the time. I know a small group of people at school, like I said, mostly I just watch. I just don't _know _them like I expected to. I thought I would find friends like the guys down at the Reservation, except maybe more into the worldly things I dream of and the far away places I can't reach, more like _me_, wanderlusting for a life past this town. Don't get me wrong, they were my best friends at one point or another in time but now it would all just be sad...and angry. I haven't seen any of them since the beginning of summer, and I rarely think of them, except today. Today, a part of me wishes I was thirteen again, sitting round the campfire as Billy tells stories, Jacob and Seth constantly fighting across me as I bat their arms away - I wanted to get lost in those stories. Billy's voice was like another world, in another time. And now, that time is gone, no longer existing in the pale light of today. The people I know at school are more complicated. I don't fit in too easily. Nettie gets on with everyone, even the people she doesn't like. I can't stand the fake pretense of the kids trying to put on a show for other people. Can't they just admit they like each other or that they don't? Can't they just admit that they're all searching for something too? Maybe I'm a hypocrite; I pretended a little for Edward, didn't I? I didn't speak when I really wanted to. I tried to be cool instead. I _tried _not to try so hard. I tried to just wait, and I spoke to him only when I thought I had something to say. Granted that something was turtles, but I think by now we both know there is something there, something beyond all the rambling and awkwardness.

I don't know what happened. I don't know why he got carried away with me today. He is so strong. I remember how it felt having him hold me, my fingers wrapped in his and I didn't want it to ever end. Except I got anxious, dizzy inside. High on Edward. His was just a physical reaction to the newness instead of my nervous and scared one.

He said he wanted to say hello and hold my hand every day, and to find out why I make those little boxes. When does he see me in Marshall's class? And I think of all the times he's looked at me, looking at something else. I don't know if he does see me when I sneak up to the attic - the empty classrooms that nobody uses - the first few times I went up there, small groups of art students would use the scoops to paint in. But after a few months, they stopped showing up. I saw Edward though, among that group, just sitting, sometimes reading. I fantasized that he was there to see me. But he never once came over. And he never hung around. Except once. I left real late one night and parties had already begun all over campus; Edward was hanging around outside the tech building across from the art building, just waiting. It was at that point, I convinced myself he must have a girlfriend, who he must have been waiting for. But I never saw her. I've only ever seen him with the grungy kid and his girlfriend, a big dark haired guy that I sometimes see Rose talking to, and then a bunch of the guys from the team.

It was so weird waking up at his house, so quiet and surreal. His dad seemed nice. He fixed me up and I should probably call and say thank you. Maybe I'll just write a note and give it to Edward in class. Except, he might not be there. I don't get why he has to leave. He said he might not be in class. What does that mean? And why is he being so extreme? What kind of response is that?

Maybe it _was _all too much too soon. Maybe I came on too strong and now he just, wants to get away from me. I fucking fainted. Who wants to deal with that, right?

We haven't even kissed.

So I think about it being bad, it's easier that way. I mean, what if he tastes bad? What if he bites my lip by accident?

At the party, he was so beautiful. So dark and mysteriously distant from me. So high and relaxed. So sexy and languid. His perfect eyes and his perfect teeth.

No. Edward Cullen _would _be a good kisser.

But maybe I won't ever know now. I fall back onto my bed, the moonlit shadows dancing inside the petals of the flowers on the ceiling. I'm so turned around by the time it takes to do everything, to think over the rush of the past two days, both of my hands hurt and my body is yelling at me non-stop.

I sleep for days it seems. And all I dream of is Edward.

Edward holding my hand down so I can't leave. Edward carrying me across the parking lot. Edward stroking my face. Edward taking my blood, playing lines along my skin as I lie in an alleyway hooked up to a machine that won't stop beeping.

Edward sitting in my room at _WV _as he takes my books off the shelf.

Edward sitting in my room here. At home, while I sleep. Waking me up and telling me he made a mistake.

I wake up each night, sweaty and cold. I have a fever and I think I'm like, fucking insane now from the lack of normalcy.

After three days of suffocation from my mom's passive aggressive tone and my dad's nonchalance, my hand doesn't ache so much anymore, so I decide I'm going to tell them it's time to go back to school. I decide I need to find Edward and make him tell me the things he pretends he can't say. I decide it's not over yet, because it hasn't even begun and he isn't the one who can make those decisions for me.

* * *

_**AN: **_

_The Boy pre-reads my slow spinning crazy, he's waiting for the lusty goods just like us! _  
_**Next chapter: Saturday**_

_I'm having fun playing in your secret messages, come find me. (I'm also on the twits under: wordsandways)_  
_Please and thank you!_  
_samrosey. xo_


	12. Pangs

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

* * *

_**Pangs**_

I spend my time holding on tight as I lock myself inside my mind, inside my own fantasies, torn between running and staying. Here at my family's home, in my bedroom, I sit in this room, my real room, the room with no bed. Creamy hollow lights blend with the earth of my outside. I've found what it is to be a monster, this life without the lure you hope for every day - and each day is longer than the last, waiting for what isn't coming; the next darling to captivate me. I wish for only one treasure, and her name is Bella.

My father spoke further with Alastair, family friend and mentor to one Carlisle Cullen. Even with all his knowledge, information and experience, he still doubts. But Bella is no forgery. From the outside looking in, over her, I see it clearly, I see a field of dreams burning in bloom.

Besides, she doesn't know of us. Of me. Not yet.

Hourly, my mind is bombarded with picture frames of her face as she realises what I am, as I go to her, lost in the madness of thinking this could be anything real - and as I take her, as she is woken by nightmares of her own curiosity, I drink. From her. Because in my nightmares, that's exactly what I do. Each and every time.

The first time I visited her room at _WV _was after I drove her home. I wanted something from her, to take with me. More than I had already taken, something whole I could touch. To remind me what she is and what it could mean if I don't stay away. I also needed a reason. Why I'm so drawn to her. More than this singer affair. _We know nothing about each other. _Does that even matter now, did it ever?

Bella's bedroom spills of girl muddied in blacks, some white and lots of messy. She shares with two instead of one, lots of space, lots of clutter. Her roommate's areas are lighter, some blues, some greens, less messy. I walked the tiny squares of their shared housing, accepting each piece of her. The Cranberries, the incense, the half-eaten pot of popcorn on her bookshelf, _Oriel's_ book of Colour Pieces, and something to be found - a tattered braid, pink and lone, lying on the floor. I instinctively slipped the friendship bracelet onto my wrist and pulled my sleeve over my hand to cover it, to cover the secret of my longing to find the pieces of her that I know i've been searching for all this time.

I left shortly after, and the next night I wanted more. Not of what she has, but of what she is. I drove down that street to her house, I walked to that door, the red one I left her at. I couldn't knock so I sat, I couldn't go in so I sat. I watched from the back of her house leaning against the trees as I wondered which room was hers, until I could take it no more. I fell into Bella Swan's bedroom through her window not thirty minutes later, to find her sleeping beautiful, dreaming, dreaming of me.

-o-

My bedroom is empty, shadows dancing where there can't possibly be shadows. Blue, black shadows with white faces, climbing the walls of my safe box. I don't feel safe now. I wish I were back at school, where things are still new but familiar and I'm not alone. Being alone plays tricks on my mind.

I wake up from bad dreams, lying on the left side of my bed. I look over and I'm still alone. In my bad dreams, someone preyed. In my good dreams, they kept me safe.

The yellow petals on the ceiling mock me as they change form into faces of old friends.

In the mornings, I don't want to do anything. My hand hurts again from using it too much and my head aches with the back and forth of my crush.

Edward Cullen.

I wonder if he's thought of me since he said goodbye, and if goodbye was easy for him as I stood crying a mess. I think it over and over, and over again some more. I know it's not true. I think he _is _out there somewhere, thinking of me. He must be. Right?

The night comes again and the shadows wake me cold and sweaty...again, convincing me of a madness only I can see.

Only this time when I wake, my window is open. I didn't open it. And there's no way it can just like...blow upwards. I've never heard of that happening. I'm scared, like a child. And if I get up, it will be real. I won't be safe in the confines of my blanket, I'll be cold and exposed to the shadows...and possibly the criminals breaking into my house!

I stare at it. For a while I just watch as the curtain billows lightly from the night air. I listen to the outside, holding onto myself, my legs bent to protect me. I don't want to get up and close it, and after a while it doesn't seem so bad when I let my eyes unfocus. I'm unfocused as sleep hits me over the head heavy.

I sleep this night away with more dreams of Edward.

Edward leaving my window open as he climbs into my room to check on me. Edward looking me over, my injured hand, my legs sticking out the sides of the covers, and he would see my face. He would lie next to me and wish all the things I wish.

When I wake up, the window is closed.

-o-

Four nights, followed by four longest days as I wait for the darkness to come - the darkness that shields my depravity. I tell no one I leave, though they hear me as I go. I tell no one where I've been, though they surely expect it. My books are filled with pictures I care not for. My screen filled with information that can't be true. Carlisle thinks the first night, at the party, the drugs must have helped. I was high and I held her for minutes, whole real minutes and she was fine. The drugs weakened me, my alerts turned way down to the call of her blood, to her nearness. I want to try it again. I told them I would. But I said I would try and stay away first.

I failed and I don't care.

Pushing the window open each night to see her beautiful face, enamouring me, and her mewls in the soft night, a slave to her dreams - these things are my life now, my compass. She wakes often, and each time she wakes I am hidden, outside on her window ledge, once - under the bed. She wakes and her breathing is heavy, afraid and coaxing. _Only _to me. To be at her feet, I _would_. To hold her close, I _could_.

But I can't. Not yet.

I wear her braid around my wrist as if she is mine. I sneak into her bedroom as if I am welcome.

I am wrong. I am helpless. I am inflamed.

I am not going anywhere.

-o-

My parents won't let me go back to school yet. The confusion stifles me. _They _stifle me.

I am like, temporarily insane due to a lack of stimulus. I have come to love sleep. I have come to look forward to the night when I can close my eyes and fantasise about a life where there are no boundaries and there are no dates and stupid first details we must learn.

Just me and Edward - dancing and painting, reading books in the meadow past campus, watching the sky change colour.

_Me and Edward._

My fantasies have become an addiction. A hot, sweaty addiction. I play the orchestral sounds of my favourites, the bluesy words of my classics as I lie in my bed, covered and hidden from all of the stuff I don't know, the stuff I can't have and the people that would frown upon my doing.

I'm missing school. I'm missing classes. All so I can masturbate my way into a coma.

Each day is the same, mom stays late at work and me and my dad eat together partaking in awkward chatter about school and all that's new in my life now. He mentions Billy. But I don't want to talk about it. Eventually he stops talking altogether, we finish and he throws the pizza boxes in the trash and musses my hair as he passes. I smile and leave him to clear the table. I watch him grab the clicker and sit on the couch, he turns on the game and the instant cheers filling the small room are loud. Obnoxious. Perfect.

I go to bed early, like every night.

I think of Nettie and Rose; they'll probably be at some party. In college, there are parties like, every night, even on Wednesdays. Nobody cares. And everybody goes.

Except me.

I'm going to my safe box to think of Edward.

Am I pathetic? Just obsessed? Does obsession make me sad? I don't feel sad. I feel excited. Excited in a weird way. Excited in my sadness, I'm trying to be realistic about my crush. I'm living it out the only way I know how.

-o-

Tonight, I could stay away no longer, seven, eight, I am here early. This time, Bella isn't in her room yet. I hear her and her father talking over supper. I hear the clattering of the trash cans. I hear the exasperation coming from her, and the contented sighs from him. I hear her footsteps as she climbs the stairs. I hear the thump of her bedroom door as it closes. I hear the same music she plays every night. I hear her steps around the room, objects being moved, drawers being pulled out and pushed back in. I hear her undress, her clothes falling to the floor. I hear her get into bed.

And then I hear nothing. Nothing for a while, past the music and breathing. Nothing but the air and the heart of Bella.

I wait for her soft sighs as she falls asleep. I move closer to the window, closer to her, and close my eyes, longing to be inside her dreams with her. After a while, her sighs turn to moans, getting louder and I don't think she's asleep. I want her to be mine, so I can be the source of her pleasure, the cause of her feeling, her moving, moving hands along her body. I want to be the one drawing lines, circles, circling for more, more cries, more ecstasy. With fervor and delight, she would fall, crashing into me, crying out for me, she's crying out for me, my name. I hear my name. _I hear my name. _

"_Edward." _

I am no longer in control of my actions. I no longer care about rules. I am no longer on the ledge, the edge of our beat, I am in it. Pounding to get in.

I am in.

I am in her bedroom and she is bewildered, lovely, rouge-cheeked and bare.

"Edward!"

* * *

**_AN:_**

_The Boy is patient with me. Even when I mess up the schedule. Clearly I suck at keeping one. *hides* My apologies. _  
**_Next chapter: (My aim is...) Wednesday_**

_Your thoughts and comments are interesting...and fun...and are much like realising Edward is watching you masturbate... Don't be shy! _  
_Please and thank you! _  
_samrosey. xo_


	13. Begging Invitations

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

* * *

**_Begging Invitations_**

A dreamland. I am in some kind of new world, one where boys like, fall into my bedroom. Definitely a dreamland. Because this cannot be real. This cannot be my life. This cannot be Edward freaking Cullen before me as my boobs, exposed to the chilly night air, are freezing - my skin trembling, my nipples hardening. My eyes close, shut tight. I open them. He's still here.

"Edward!"

He raises both hands, telling me something, to be quiet? Telling me not to be afraid? Well, I am a little afraid. But more so just flustered. I'm surprised, dumbfounded, "What are you doing here? Why are you..."

"I should be ashamed, I know. I should be sorry, I know. I'm not. Bella, I'm not. I apologise only for not explaining. Only for meeting you, and perpetuating this..._this_." He comes closer, gesturing between us as the space gets smaller. He's talking about _us_, me and him.

"I'm confused." I feel confused all the time lately. I grab the covers, to cover my naked body. Edward saw me naked. Edward is looking at me...naked.

"You're lovely." His voice is like air, like lust, like chocolate, like the moon. The moon coming into my room, lighting me up, on fire. _I'm on fire._

"Why did you come here?" Please just tell me. Simple terms. I can take it. I _need _it.

"To have what I cannot." He sits on the bed next to me. The weight of him is a mixture of warmth, the coolness from outside lingering on his skin.

"What can't you have?" He eyes me, his eyes are on me like I am food, hungry. It's intimidating, completely animalistic. And from this boy, _for _this boy, I am lusty, lust pouring out of my own eyes, my own mouth, my own heart. He sees me, he sees into me, over me, along my skin, my shoulders, my neck, my face. I feel it all.

"You." But you _can _have me. _Take it all, it's yours._

My voice doesn't exist, my mouth opens for one reason, and one reason only - to breathe. All around me, surrounding me, the air is tight, too tight, and harder to draw in. Edward sits close, but not touching. He's playing hard to get even here, even now.

"Your father's coming." _What?_ I look at the door. How does he know? I look at him. _Edward_...

_Where did he go?_

"Bells..." Dad knocks then comes in, the blanket now wrapped around me completely.

"Yeah, dad?" His eyes are squinty.

"Everything okay?" His voice is like burnt coffee.

"Yeah, why?"

"Nothing, I just thought I heard... Nothing. _Uh_, just close the window, you'll freeze. Goodnight."

"Night, dad." He closes the door, and I wish I could lock it.

"_Edward_." I whisper, and he climbs back through the window. Wow. Edward is climbing through my window, and he smells crazy good. Like...something I can't name. Something new. Something secret. Something sexy. And it fills my room.

"Bella, would you get dressed for me?"

"Um... Sure. Turn around." He turns and I wonder why he asked me to get dressed. It's disconcerting. It makes my cheeks red. And not in a good way. "_'_Kay." When I'm done, I move back over to the bed. We sit, and he sits in front of me with his legs crossed. I cross mine too.

"Can we just talk?" He says, and I'm holding out no hope at this point for any real answers...or _maybe_ it's the answers I want to hear which I think so infeasible, as a thousand reasons against them scream until hoarse against the flickering candlelight illumination of such long awaited admissions and revelations. These nagging voices and their nauseating reality sit so very heavy in the pit of my stomach. All I can think of are these things he could say, will say - excuses, pragmatic evaluations, mutual admonishments for our foolishness - to explain, to justify why we shouldn't be together.

"Are you here to tell me why you shouldn't be here?"

"Something like that."

"So..." I wait.

"How about we start with the easy stuff first?" Easy. Like, what did you have for dinner today? Easy.

"You first." I tell him, but he just kind of sits there looking, looking at me. He doesn't move, he's so...still. Presumably thinking about what he wants to say, what he wants to ask.

"Who are the people in the pictures on your wall?" _Oh. _Anything but that.

"Not easy." This is fifth date material...or something.

"No?" I know he's even more curious now...fuck. I really don't want to talk about it.

"_No_. Next..." I urge him to ask another.

"Why do you play this song on repeat?"

"Because it's you." Oh god. _It's you?_ I'm a dork. I'm crazy. I'm squirming in my skin and he's still looking. "I mean, it's what I was listening to when I first saw you."

"In class?"

"Oh, um, no...I saw you walking across campus first." I watch for his reaction. I see a smile. Small. Sexy. I want to giggle, dive on him and giggle, make him giggle and then maybe just...smell him some more.

"Do you masturbate a lot?"

"What?"

"I said, do you..."

"Don't say it again! God, I'm _so_...I _wasn't_, it's _not _like..."

"Bella. It's not a bad thing." _I_ know it's not. Wait, it's _not_?

I'm small. Right now, I'm the small thing that no one can make out as I sit underneath the too bright light as they all stare. My room is the petrie dish. And I'm burning, burning bright from the focus.

"You're uncomfortable now." It's not a question he's asking. It's just...true.

"I think it's my turn." I sit up, excited to get information from him, about him. Finally. "Why can't we be together?" Each piece of his face, I wait for it to change. I wait for the frown, the frustration, the sadness, anything. _Nothing_.

"We said easy. _Next_..."

"Just...tell me why no touching. Are you just nervous? Is it a religious thing?" It's so...odd. And noticeable.

"What do you mean?" He's confused. Finally. _Something_.

"You held my hand, _twice_. But you got pissed at me when I hit your head with my head and then after this," I wave my hand at him, "You didn't help me in or out of the car, you didn't hug me goodbye, you didn't touch me just now and I was _naked_. Even now, you moved away as I moved closer, no knees, no touching."

"Observant."

"Not really. Just..._impatient_." So many weeks, so many classes, so much waiting, waiting for the right thing to say, like, I could just mess it up in an instant. I cried in front of him, I fainted. I touched myself...I said his name and he saw me. He knows. So just...do something already.

"Bella, we still can't..." He looks away from me for the first time since he fell into my room. I don't like it, I think he's going to leave.

"Don't go." _Please stay_.

"Then make it easy."

"Okay, on one condition. For every two easy things, I get a hard question!" I wait, waiting to be shot down. Denied access, yet again.

"Deal."

"_Deal_." I hold out my hand, a reflex, waiting for him to shake it. He doesn't take it. Of course. What is his deal?

-o-

Bella Swan, bare and becoming, pink and lovely. Bella Swan, naked and eroticised, masturbating to thoughts of me. The paintings are so clear in the dark, living vines only I see, across her chest, covering her breasts, running through to her heart.

If I were human, if I were an average teenage boy, I may have made a joke about this, causing embarrassment - more than she already feels - at the same time as harboring my own embarrassment. I would be hoping for something physical in all her glory. I would be itching to be inside her.

I am all of those things.

Fully and all too aware. I _am _itching, I _am _hoping. But with that hope, I also see her lying on the floor in J.J's class. I see her hooked up to a machine, wires and beeping, the waiting and the despair of it all.

If I had a soul, it would be above me, dallying with her's. If I had a heart, I would no longer be a cantata, my heart and I, we would be beating to the same aria as her's. I hear it. Even now, over her explanation of why she lives on campus and not here at her family home. It's all because of her parents and something mournful about a wheelchair. Before she can explain, she dodges me again, and continues to plot and avoid, continuously denying me when I ask about the people in the frames. When she speaks of these people, she seems despondent, in another world, one that I don't know, one that doesn't exist in this time and space with her. Each night, for a whole week, I came here, her mother's tone towards her changing only once. I don't blame her for the look that covers her face now, or for leaving to live at school away from them, and I wish once more that we could run. We would run fast and free. And I would try my love. This thing inside me waiting to burst out.

My mind is lost in wonder about how she would respond to my true nature. I try to find ways of gauging her reaction. I explain to her about our living situation and how often we've moved, moving from town to town every couple of years so we stay unfamiliar. I tell her how Carlisle, my 'adoptive father', found me, still embellishing the only facts I can actually give her. As much as being a sick orphan, on the brink of death, can be embellished. Nevertheless, Carlisle saved the day with a kind of miracle cure. _See: vampirism - miracle cure. _Not at all something I thought I would ever say, let alone think.I also spoke of how he met Esme, as Bella's big brown eyes got wider with each new piece of information, only to then fill with tears, and finally, get smaller again when she smiled as the happy ending came. She asked me how Carlisle and I look so alike since he's not my birth father and I deflect, she asks me about the new rule of no touching again and whether or not it's just as simple as my "hands are so cold". _Because they are. _She's asking too much, so I try for something new, "My turn. Are you squeamish?"

"What do you mean, like vomit and gooey stuff, like insects and slime?" She's adorable.

"More like...horror, _bloody _horror..."

"That's your hard question?" She looks confused. Cute and confused as her nose wrinkles and her eyes get smaller. She pulls at her feet, wrapped underneath her as she thinks for a while.

"Yes. And your answer?"

"It's not so simple. It really all depends. I mean, if you got hurt, like, got cut somehow. I wouldn't freak out. If _you_..." She thinks for a while, her eyes penetrating me, piercing me over and over again with her stare, until, "No. I _like _horror, _bloody _horror."

That's it, I have nothing left in my arsenal. It might just have to be the truth or nothing at all. I cannot see the future and nothing has been decided. I have no hope, absolutely no hope when it comes to what will be when she sees me that way for the first time.

"My turn again. _Um_. Your know, your eyes change colour...sometimes they are so light, and sometimes, like now, they are dark, like mine. Why?"

"I'm not like you, Bella."

"What do you mean?" She moves forward again, always trying for more.

"I'm not right for you." Her knees touch mine and I feel the beginning of it momentarily, cementing me in my spot yet elevating me above it all at once. Pulsing beats and running currents. How does she not feel it?

"You _could _be right for me. If you just..._try_." She lifts her hand, her fucking hand to touch my face. This can't work if she won't listen.

"No. I couldn't. I can't." I move, gone, off the bed, away from her, against the wall.

"What is going on?" An instant sadness, as if I am breaking her heart over and over, she is rejected once again. I _have _to stop, end this now.

"We're not the same, and if you continue to pursue this, you _will _get hurt, Bella."

"I don't believe that. I _don't _believe you." Blind persistence. Is this girl brave? Or is she just stupid?

"Believe _that _then," Her hand, she forgets so quickly. Not like I, not like I have a choice. "Believe _me_, if you think this to be a strong connection, believe _me_. Trust _me_."

"Trust? You haven't given me anything _to _trust, Edward. Only half truths and not much else, nothing I can hold onto anyway. _You_, I can't hold onto. Will you even be in class? Will I ever see you after tonight?"

"Yes."

"Yes to both?"

"You _will _see me again, but this is hard, much more difficult than I imagined. It takes everything in me not to..."

"Not to what?" She's off the bed, moving towards me again.

"To be with you, touching you. I think about..."

"About what?"

"My lips on yours, _tasting _you..." I _can't _stop.

"You think about kissing me?" She's close now, too close. I feel her breath across my face and I..._she smells insanely good_ - her scent assaulting, her blood tempting.

"Every second." I give her truth. Maybe not the truth she really wants, but still.

"Would you wrap your arms around me first?"

"I would close my eyes so I could sense you, feel you moving closer in the dark, each beat of your heart getting faster..."

"And then..." She's relentless, with every new breath, with every new word, she's determined.

"Your lips would be sweet, soft, wet from my tongue." She's panting, her chest heaving. "Your cheeks are delightful."

"Are you...would you be like, kissing me right _now_?"

"Right here, against this wall. Right _here_, against my heart." Her body this near, it's almost too much. But this space we're learning is ours now.

"I trust you." I search her voice for clues; insincerity. I find no such thing.

"Why?" She is as crazed as I feel.

"Because I was naked and you asked me not to be. Because you sat on my bed in the middle of the night and didn't try anything, not once. I trust you in the hope that...you'll know. You'll know it's okay to say anything to me. Maybe even why we can't do what we're already doing. _I trust you_."

"Bella, if I asked you to come with me right now, would you?"

* * *

_**AN: **_

_The Boy makes me better. I have love. _  
_**Next chapter: (Hopefully...) Saturday**_

_So... are you still with me? _  
_Please and thank you! _  
_samrosey. xo_


	14. Elemental

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

* * *

_**Elemental**_

"Come with you? Now? Where?" This night is like, fast, too fast. Since Edward fell into my room unannounced up until now, as he's asking me to leave, go with him, I have had no time to think ahead. And I still don't. All I know is, if I don't go, I may never know his deal. I may never learn him the way I want to. Touching or no touching. And honestly, standing here, in front of him, standing this close, his face, my mouth, his eyes, my face - searching for an answer - this moment is so full of something I've never felt before. Something not orchestrated, something not played out in rehearsal beforehand, something not on the big screen or on the pages of books that I love.

It's real.

"You know what...it doesn't even matter. Let me get my shoes." He turns to leave...through the window. "Wait, you _can't_ go out that way, you'll fall!"

"I'll be fine. Meet me at my car." He'll be fine? I walk towards the window to watch him go, but before I make it to the sill, he turns to face me. "Hurry, before your parents wake again."

I grab my purse, I change my top, pull on my hoodie and zip it up to my boobs. My boobs that he's already seen..._my god_. I push my finger into a little pot of pink tint and run it fast across my lips. I throw my hair over my head, ruffle, ruffle, stand - dizzy - and check myself in the mirror. This is it.

I know all of the cracks in the floorboards and I consider this mental map of the creaky parts as my foot hovers before each new step. Gracelessly utilizing what little agility I possess, I manage to make it down the stairs and out the door without making any noise. I am free.

Edward stands in the black of night against a silver car, his hands in his pockets. I walk towards him, excited. Super excited to feel normal, to feel like the actual I waited for really might happen.

I think of Nettie and can't wait to tell her and Rose about this. Only maybe not about the masturbating...

He doesn't speak when I reach the car, he just opens the door to the passenger side and waits for me to get in. It's special, so minute, but so nice. I get in and it's warm, or maybe my expectations are tricking me into thinking it's warm because when he gets in, his elbow skimming mine, I instantly feel cold again. He starts the car, a low humming sound, sounding brand new, comes to life in the night and we're off. He turns on the heater and I can't stop looking at him. He turns to me a few times and I want to tell him to stop, stop looking away from the road. And each time he looks away, I want to ask him to look at me instead.

The car's speed feels smooth, slow almost, though I notice he's going sixty. It doesn't feel dangerous, though being with him does. It doesn't feel safe, though knowing he's in control does.

It's funny. When I look at my hand, I don't remember being hurt. It aches and has been a pain in the ass like, all week but I woke up in that house feeling confused and weirded out. But not damaged in any way. Maybe I should? I mean, he squeezed me so hard he almost crushed me. And then he dropped into my room like a bomb - a teenage boy, smelling like soap, sexy and new - and now it's after midnight and I'm driving in his car, going somewhere I didn't feel the need to check on first.

I think maybe when we bumped heads, my brain rattled around in my skull and nobody thought to check for concussion.

"You changed." Edward is looking at me again. His voice is so soft when he speaks, and he speaks so little. It's kind of annoying, but like, calming or something.

"Oh." Looking down at my clothes, I run my hands along my legs, wishing now that he hadn't noticed. "Yeah." Even though I totally did want him to notice. But in a good _she looks amazing_ kind of way.

It's a little awkward again because I have no idea what to say, no game of twenty-one questions to hide behind and nothing relevant in sight that could possibly help. I reach for the heat, it's starting to suffocate me in this tiny car, only Edward does too. His fingers touch mine and I am jolted. Sent back into my seat, held down by my seatbelt that feels too tight. I am cold, he is...cold. "What the _fuck_ was that?"

"Cold hands. I apologise."

"No, Edward. _Freezing _hands. Like, shocking me with an ice bucket, _no_, an ice mountain of something sharp and... Is that like..."

"I have a condition."

"You do?" I remember his hands being cold before, I remember feeling cold still after the party when we left but I was high, I was nervous. I thought maybe I was remembering it all wrong. And in class..._ He has a condition? _

"Yes. I don't like to talk about it."

I made him feel bad. I suck. He's definitely going to trust me with his secrets now...

"It's okay, Bella. You didn't know." No, I didn't. Because you tell me nothing!

"Can you tell me where we're going?"

"It's a surprise." I like surprises. Super secret surprises that reveal this whole thing about us _not_ being able to be together as a wild exaggeration would be perfect.

I turn for the first time since we left my house to see what outside looks like. It looks like school. Are we going to his dorm room? Am I going to get to see his things? His bed? I imagine sitting on his bed with him, maybe lying down side by side as we try not to touch each other. He would have to give in then, right? Then again, he didn't try anything at my house at all. Not even once.

I'm so helplessly confused.

We pull up to the edge of campus near the green where the girls and I got high. Edward shuts off the engine, gets out of the car and I just sit there. He doesn't say a word, but opens my door, standing tall, waiting for me to get out too. I do and we are one again, standing so close I can almost taste him.

"What are we doing here?"

"You'll see. Come on." He pops the trunk and grabs something, it's grey. "You might need this." He hands it to me and I hold it out, it's his grey coat from the first day of class. I smile to myself as the box of fantasies that live inside my head, play out in the darkness as Edward walks away. I slip my arms into the sleeves and pull it around me. It's a little tight over my hoodie and won't cover my boobs but I don't care. It's Edward.

We walk across the green, and he's walking much faster than I am. I try to keep up and let my hand linger out at the side of me a few times hoping he will grab it. He's really serious about this no touching and I'm so frustrated I might go mad before the dawn, especially if he doesn't have answers waiting for me at the end of this trek.

-o-

Her feet move quickly, her short legs brushing against each other with each pass. My instinct is to grab her, have her hiking at the same pace as me. But this is not really my pace. My pace is fast, a speed she could barely see. But I cannot take hold of her wrist and I cannot lift her onto my back. So I wait, and we continue to advance in a way that causes great annoyance to me. Just another reason we aren't compatible.

_The thrum of her heart beating, the hum of the car as we drove. Her warmth, heating me whenever we're near each other, resulting in us almost touching. The immediate intimacy she seems to want at all times. _

This would be the time to express myself - and all the times before when I should have but could not.

Am I just delaying the inevitable? Am I right to hold back when I know it's only a matter of time before the bottle stop is blown out in a rush of need? Am I right to lead her along this path when I know in all reality we can never be?

Reality. _This is mine. _My existence is one of the extraordinary, the seemingly impossible even. One of fantasy, one of nightmares. Reality. _Mine is not hers. _

My feet are tired of not being able to push past their need for more.

"We're almost there, keep up." I pick it up a little more. I watch her from here, her body gust forward with a new hurried stride. She is no doubt focused on the end, concentrating on _what _is at the end.

I am filled with lines from pop culture, from comic books and legends. All the theories - some right. All the stories of us - a lot of them wrong. Many laughable. _She won't be laughing. _She will think of the made up, the pretend, the blood suckers from scary movies, with their capes, the bats and the garlic.

I wish for her to only see the truth of _my _words, sketched out in pieces, one by one, until finally she has them all - and she will.

"Walk ahead of me." She looks up at my face, I know she wants to ask why. She doesn't and I'm glad. The fact that I can't hold her now as the ground gets harder to hike is killing me. Every time she wants and I don't give, it kills me. Resounding failure filters into my brain. What kind of man am I for her?

I am no man.

I should not be the one to do this.

But I will be. Because she's inside me now. All around me now.

-o-

The higher we get, the lighter the sky seems. Maybe because we're closer to the moon, closer to the sea. We walked a while and through the trees and the rocky ground, he still never took my hand, helping me through. I probably shouldn't expect it. I'm my own person, with my own strengths. Still, it doesn't stop me wanting to be helped, or wanting him to want to help me, regardless.

Through the trees, way past the green, what I once thought was the prettiest place in this town, is dust compared to this. I am wide awake, a new kind of open to what I see, because what I see is truly special.

"What is this place?"

"I found it one day, and now I come here when I need to get away."

"Get away from what?"

"Life." It's an obvious answer. One that screams of many roads I hope to learn.

"It's so pretty."

"Like you." I fight the compliments he gives. He doesn't get to do that. He shouldn't get to do that before I know if he's really going to give what comes next.

"Don't do that."

"I can't say nice things?"

"You can. Only if you mean them."

"You don't think I mean them." It's not a question but I answer anyway.

"It's not that. I just...want it all." I can't help it. I can't not ask. I can't not need the information he's withholding. The simple things I think I deserve.

"Come on." He walks ahead of me through the opening and through the flowers, the blue, maybe purple flowers. He stops at a bank, and sits. His knees up, his wrists resting on them.

I go to him. And I think, whether he tells me or not, I'll never not go to him. If he's waiting, wanting. No matter how much, how little, I always will.

Edward is a part of my life now.

"Here." He takes off his jacket and lays it on the grass.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome." He's so polite. He's so correct. I don't see a slip up anywhere in anything he's ever said to me.

"You think of things...before you say them, I mean. I don't work so well like that."

"I told you, we're not the same."

"I'm beginning to see that." But I want to know why.

"Bella, do you believe in God?"

"I don't know. Sometimes. I mean. Sometimes I wish he was real. It kind of feels...like he should be, you know? But then, I've never seen him, so..."

"You don't think that life is proof of god?"

"No."

"Is that how it works for you then, see it to believe it?"

"Sort of. I guess some things are unbelievable. For lots of reasons. But if I saw it, if I saw God. Then no matter what I thought was reasonable, possible, probable...it doesn't matter, right?"

"Face me, Bella." I turn to face him, my legs crossed. I can already feel my ass getting wet from the grass. I can hear the animals that live here, scurrying, flying from branch to branch, the light trickle of water. There must be a brook nearby. "You said you trust me."

"I do."

"Is that real?"

"I don't know. But I don't want to be anywhere else. And I haven't wanted anything else but you in a long time. So if it's not...then it might end badly. And if it is real...well I guess we'll see." I want nothing more than for him to open his mouth and give me truth. His history, his reasons, his feelings.

"_I trust you_, Bella. I am trusting _you _to remember yourself. I am trusting _you _to remember what you see and what you feel right now and all that you've seen before."

"Okay..." I'm a little afraid. The sinking feeling in my stomach is back, travelling through my legs and back again.

"Roll up your sleeves and hold out your arms." I hold them out and I have no idea what's coming, why I need to do this. "Don't close your eyes, okay Bella. _Look at me._ Just _look _at _me_."

Barely there, I feel the chill, separate from this outside world, of his fingers. Barely there, I anticipate it with every piece of me, every beat of me, waiting, waiting for them to fall heavy. The wind feels strong, the wind is silent it's so strong, all the sounds cushioned from the birds and the water. His index finger draws a line along my wrist as I look at nothing but him. But I see other things too, other things like my bed, falling onto my bed, and my feet, my feet no longer touching the ground. I can't look away and I can't move. I'm _so _cold. _What is he doing?_ He's still here, still touching me, like before, this is like before in class, how I felt right before I passed out. I don't want to do that again. _What's wrong with me?_ I don't want to go to sleep, Edward. I don't want to fall. _Edward_.

"_Edward_."

"It's okay. _Breathe_. Look at me, Bella, just _look _at me and _breathe_. Can you hear me?"

"Birds. I can hear the birds again."

"Are you alright? What did you feel?"

"Like I was dying. Like I was about to fall into the world from right here. Like it was about to go dark and I couldn't move to get up. What did you do? What did you to me, Edward?"

"I touched you."

* * *

**_AN:_**

_The Boy has many skills, pre-reading is one of them! *blushes*_  
**_Next chapter: (It's come to my attention that I suck at schedules, so let's say... Hopefully... ) Wednesday._**

_Your comments and thoughts are like seeing the Meadow for the first time...with Edward! _  
_Please and thank you!  
samrosey. xo_


	15. Mind Over Matter

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

* * *

_**Mind Over Matter**_

There was no light but I knew she was still up there. I left when the others left, thinking she would follow. She seemed blind to the potential dangers of leaving so late. Even the space she occupied, she was fearless in protecting it, using the same materials, the same seat and window of light before they got to it. But there was no light now, as I waited for Bella to come out, waiting for her to realise it was getting too late and she had to walk across campus. I couldn't read their minds or see their future decisions but I saw it in their eyes, their desire as she passed them, brushing their shoulders through the hallway, or trudging across the green to get to her dorm room, her pretty face in the night light. So I waited. Outside of the technology building, I was still in earshot of the attic in the art building. I could still hear her moving, hear her breathing.

Even then, when she finally appeared as drunkards scattered on the darkest night, the silent of night, she wasn't afraid, only lost in her mind about the piece she had been working on. Anxious to get back to her friends and the comfort of this new living.

But now, as we sit planted in the middle of the maze that is this meadow, she looks afraid. She is definitely afraid now.

"What did you do to me?"

"You begged to know the reasons why we can't be together. Now you know."

"No, Edward. _What_... _How_... _Show me._.." Scrambling to her feet she kicks around in the grass for something. Attempting to assess the situation, her mood - and the possibilities about what this is - inside her mind are a chaos on top of my own. My own being the thirst, my own being the paramount pressure pushing against my rib cage, pulling my arms and lifting my feet to get up and hunt her, my teeth sliding over my tongue as the saliva gathers just thinking about how she would taste. When I touch her and feel the new power; her energy, takes away the need to feed for as long as we are connected. When that ends, my hunger feels new again. New again as she frenziedly rummages in the high grass.

"Hey..." She picks up a stick from the filthy ground, aimed at me, she wants more. "What do you have there, show me?"

"I have nothing, you're hysterical."

"_I'm_ hysterical! _I'm hysterical! _You shocked me, or hypnotised me, or stuck me with something. And _I'm hysterical.._."

"Calm down, Bella please. I know you must be confused. You were looking at _me _the whole time, was I holding anything but you?"

Her eyes are searching, searching her memories, searching the moments that have already passed, and my person, she searches me, and I show her, only to find nothing.

"I guess."

"Sit down. Please." She acquiesces, she knows I'm right.

"I want to run, you should know that. I want to run home because my whole body is tingling, screaming at me to go."

"I'm not forcing you to stay. Bella, you don't have to stay."

"That's the thing... More than that, I want to know why. More than that, I still want to be able to see you, hear your voice. _I'm officially crazy_."

"I'm sorry, Bella."

"Stop. Just stop. Every time you say that, I feel like you're apologising for the things I don't know, don't see. Every time you say that, I feel like you're about to leave."

"Close your eyes."

"I..." Her fear hurts me. Her fear crawls inside me, stabbing it's way through everything I have lived.

"I won't touch you. I won't hurt you." Her brown eyes are black. And in this night, she could be the same as me. Her pale skin against mine, her cold against my cold. But she's not. And she never will be.

She closes her eyes finally, her long lashes fluttering against her cheek. "Listen to the sounds around you."

"I don't hear anything."

"You _do_. Listen."

I can see her trying, I see the tilt of her head as she tries to get closer to the sounds, and I see the moment when it happens, it's familiar, it's clarity.

"What do you hear?"

"Birds. The ones I heard before, moving from tree to tree."

"What else?"

"I don't know, water and something else..."

"A deer quenching its thirst. A blue bird, feeding its babies. The stream, flowing away from us, until it meets the end, falling, rushing over the top. Your heart, beating faster to understand. An owl, watching us."

"You can hear my heart, right now?"

"Always."

"That's not possible. Whatever you _did_...how do you _know _what's in the dark? How can you possibly hear my..._heart_?"

"You're afraid. Finally."

"Because you're scaring me, Edward."

"Not intentionally, or rather, it's entirely intended. But not by me."

"Then by who?"

"The ones before me. Human nature. Nursery rhymes. Call it what you want. It's been there. For good reason."

"What reason?"

"I am a monster."

"What?" She searches for answers in places other than my face now. Maybe her own mind, maybe in the memories of me and the lists of happenings and instances that don't add up. "Your condition, is that what you mean? What is wrong with you exactly?"

"Everything."

"Not everything. The condition, you said..."

"Your scent is assaulting."

Her eyes are wide, her mouth is catching up. The difficulty of difficulties is this..._ I am a vampire. _

"I haven't showered. I mean, you came over unannounced, I..." She buries her head inside her hooded sweater. Inside the coat I gave her.

"I didn't say it was unsatisfactory."

"It's not?"

"I still remember the first time, I remember five Tuesdays ago, I remember three days ago when you were sleeping, I remember it all, each and every time, even how you smell when you're aroused and now, as your blood is pumping around your body underneath your skin. Only I _see _it, also. As clear as anything could be, the path it runs, a never-ending cycle of life."

She rolls her sleeves up again, "Show me."

"You know why I can't do that."

"No, I mean... You see it _now_? Underneath my skin... Show me where..."

We sit knees almost to knees. She watches me waiting, eyes to her beautiful, eager eyes. My fingers hover above in the brisk air, I could hold them still forever, waiting to touch, waiting until I'm ready with the answer of what I am. But I don't want to. I want to touch her soon, now, every moment in every place, in all the places I have thought about, dreamed about, and seen. I have seen parts of Bella that she did not willingly show me. I forced that upon her by falling into her bedroom without consent. I can't get back that first time I saw her, and neither can she.

My fingers hover, ready. More so than ever before, because I am finished taking things from her without permission.

-o-

I kicked at the grass unseeing. Not only because of the night, not only because my mind wouldn't stop running but because of the tears. My eyes watered with a fury. I wanted to cry in embarrassment, I wanted to release all of the anxiety of his abrupt hello, I needed a release from the tension of not being able to touch him. I held in my tears out of fear. I feared his answers and I feared my crazy would negate it all.

My understanding of him feels like it's changing quickly, like all of the things I thought I knew about him from afar, all of the things I saw, trying to gather the pieces to make a picture in my mind of what he would be like, aren't really true.

Edward Cullen, a little serious. Edward Cullen, a lot sexy, unapproachable and perhaps even untouchable. Edward Cullen, _monster_. No, I don't think so. He's different, sure. He has all these things, these ways, like smart ways of knowing my answers, or not even needing to ask the questions. And he likes me, he wants me in return. But he can't have me, or so he says. We can't be together like everybody else can, or so he shows me. He showed me; something's wrong when we touch. He seems normal, watching me flail. And _I_...have some kind of allergic reaction to him. I'm allergic to Edward Cullen and I don't even know how that's possible. He sees things clearer than me, hears things that I cannot. He's older than me somehow, colder than me too, in fact, he sits here now in just a tshirt and seems fine, but if I were to feel his skin, his paler than pale skin, he would shock me with his condition, his icy caress. He found this place in the dark and drives fast cars. He climbs the walls of my house and I just go wherever he wants.

Why him? Why is _he _different? He's like an animal that watches me. He's like an animal sniffing me out amongst the rest. But I'm just a kitten, alone and lost, unaware of the massive hunt this whole time. I don't know this game. And I wish I could see as clear as he does.

He sits across from me, almost touching but not quite, like always. I would definitely know if he was and for the first time since knowing him, I can say, I'm not sure I want him to.

_I want him to._

My tummy pulls at the inside of me, hurt by my lie. I _do _want him to. I _do _want him to be able to.

But I don't know if we can ever be..._normal_.

He wants to show me, or rather, I told him he should. He speaks in crazy about lines on my skin. My blood. I don't know if that's something I should be creeped out by, or if I'm just rightfully rocked by the depth of his words. He likes me so much he sees me this way, as some kind of sustenance. Like this lust I feel is the same as he does. And it's too much, he wants to eat me up. Like I want to crawl inside of him and stay there a while.

But it might be more. It might not be some kind of metaphor and I try, I shake my head and close my eyes and try hard not to think of what it means if it's not, what it means if he really wants me in more ways than that.

_A monster. _

Like movies. Like fiction.

I can feel him, so close to me, his fingers are ghosts and his movements are a dance, dancing where they wish to walk, talk, have and hold. I hold my breath, I don't know why, I just do. Until I have to breathe. Until I have to breathe in all the air and all of the things I want but aren't having right now. I think about melting into him, lying on top of him in the grass, rolling around, and tucking myself into his body as he holds me tight, his hands running free over my shoulders, my back, my waist and how I would breathe with him, in and out, in and out at the same pace, filling the same space with the same breath of our lives beginning. His fingers hover over my mouth, so close to my lips, I almost want to lick them. Stick my tongue out and lick, just once, just quick, but I think if I do, that thing from before might happen. Or maybe that's not how it works, I felt fine when we bumped heads and I felt fine in the car as we both went for the stereo.

"Hey, how come nothing happened at the party? We touched then."

"I was high."

"I know but..."

"It seems that the drugs diminish the effect, decreasing the frequency."

_The frequency._ "You make it sound like we're machines."

"Not machines. Animals perhaps."

"You said monster."

"Okay, me _monster_, you _animal_."

"Me _girl_. You _boy_."

"Not a boy."

"Sorry, a _man_."

"Wrong again."

"I _won't _say you're a monster."

"Not even after what you saw when we connected?"

"Nope."

"What about now?" He stares at me, staring into me. It's intense. He grips the grass, his hand sinking into the dirt. He's...strong. Digging deep into the earth beneath us. His stillness is a little violent, startling and...interesting, too interesting when it should be something else. Bringing his hand back up, he holds a mound of dirt and grass, pulled right up, right out with his bare hand, leaving a hole and a crack in the ground.

"Edward..."

"Am I a monster _now_?"

"How did you do that?"

"Stop asking me questions, Bella. Stop asking for answers where there are only nightmares."

"Why are you here then?"

"Pardon me?"

"Why did you bring me here? Why did we come if you don't plan to tell me, or this, why do that if you're just going to hide from me?"

"I'm not hiding."

"Yes. _You are_."

"I'm _trying_."

"Just tell me. Just say it." I don't know what it is I want him to say exactly. Maybe I'm tired. Maybe I'm stupid and I don't see what's right in front of me. Maybe I don't want to see.

"It's a secret. It's not normal. I'm not normal."

"I told you, you can say anything. Trust me with anything. And besides, what's normal anyway? It's like, just because one person says something should be one way, everybody just...reacts, and falls in line. But who says we can't be whatever we want. However we want. When did this become the way of living? I don't know if I want what everybody else has. I do know, no matter what it is, I want your secret. I want what's _not _normal."

"Think about it. Think about waking up at my house, the good doctor and his eyes. Think about the blood, think about my strength and _my _eyes. Think about me, needing drugs to lessen my senses. Senses I shouldn't have. What did you eat today, Bella?"

"Um, pizza. What does that have to do with anything?"

"I can't remember the last time I ate human food." Human food? What does that even mean? He's not human? He eats something else, made just for him. _Not humans. _

"Edward..." What he's telling me isn't possible. What he's putting into my mind isn't right. He isn't right. "You're starting to scare me again."

"Good. I _am _scary. I _am _to be feared. Somehow you turned out to be my greatest hunt. You were so easy, attracted to the mystery of my behaviour, my appearance, my actions even. Just as it is supposed to be. We were designed that way, Bella. Do you get it, finally? Only now, we can't complete, we can't feed because if we do, chaos and perhaps worse...we can't complete so I have to watch you, unable to feed off the most succulent of..."

"What are you?" I see it now. This is a dream. Or like, some kind of twisted nightmare I fell into from all the sleeping. And the masturbating. And the thinking of Edward and his excuses, something so far out there in order to comprehend why he wouldn't want me. Why he _doesn't _want me. "_I_ did this. _My god. _You could be anything. We're dreaming, right? So come on, what are you? A _demon_, a _vampire_, no, I got it! You're just a _boy _and I'm insane. I want to go home. Take me home, and I'll wake up. It's the only way I can wake up. _Take me home, Edward_."

_Please_. I don't want this. I don't know how to accept this.

"No, Bella. This is not a dream. And you were right before. I'm sorry but this is real and you have to stay. You must see now why this can't continue."

"_You smell pretty._" He doesn't speak. He just waits. He waits and I'm trying to piece this madness to make one..._vampire_. "I get it now."

"Bella."

"No. I get it. We can't be together. You're not like me. You're not normal. You're right. Now, can you take me home please?"

I think I have to leave now. I have to get out of here. I have to get away from him, away from Edward.

* * *

_**AN: **_

_Last week was the week I chose to let my words pile up. It was needed much. _

_The Boy is back this chapter, as always, making me better. _  
_**Next chapter: I've thrown out the schedule, I was never good at those. So... Expect one chapter per week, a chapter I hope that you'll look forward to!**_

_This was a big one, a hard one. Tell me how it went..._  
_Please and thank you! _  
_samrosey. xo_


	16. Scary Stories

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

* * *

**_Scary Stories_**

I was nine when I read my first comic book. It was really old, the colours were almost all worn out, and it smelled like turps. I used the pennies I had collected in my penguin shaped ceramic money box to buy it at a jumble sale, and it was the first really scary thing I had ever seen. For the longest time, I couldn't stop looking at the pages and pages of evil vampires, but I was especially intrigued by _her _face. I would take it out every night to see it - the look of shock growing on the face of the heroine, the subtle changes as she moved from the unknown to the absolutely terrified.

For Halloween one year, down at the Res, Seth and Jake dressed as vikings, they wore blonde wigs, and home made helmets, wielding plastics swords as they fought. I was fifteen that year, and went dressed as a vampire. A slutty vampire, but a vampire all the same.

But I was eighteen when I first met one. _A vampire._ Edward Cullen is a vampire. Or so he told me. _Showed me._ He tried to show me multiple times and I just... _Edward is a vampire._

_"Can you take me home please?"_

_"Bella."_

_"I'm okay. I just, it's been a long night, I want to go home, take a shower and get into bed." And pretend this is all just a nightmare. This is all just a nightmare._

_I don't think I ever walked so fast, walking back to the car, I don't know which is safest - walking behind him, and risk him leading me somewhere else. Or in front, where I can't see him. Either way, when the ground gets rocky again, he makes me walk behind him. _

_A part of me thought it was so he could catch me if I fell - he still can't touch me, not unless I want to feel like I'm dying anyway. _

_But then the other part of me - you might say the normal part - was screaming at me to run. He tells me he's not like me. He's super strong and it's dangerous for us to be so close. _

_And he is...dangerous. _

Looking at that comic book now, even older, is not so scary. I try to relate that fanged vampire with Edward. They're both pale, sure. But Edward doesn't have fangs. At least, I don't think so. He doesn't have black and white hair, he doesn't have red eyes. His eyes are like honey, like caramel, like all the soft brown leafy comfort of Autumn. Sometimes they're more like night, like dark and alone, I could lose myself in them, I could lose myself in him. He's not...scary. He's not dangerous. Is he? I mean, _really_. Would he hurt me? Does he want to..._eat me?_ _Suck my blood?_

I don't think so. Edward burst into my bedroom and didn't suffocate me with the sheets I wrapped myself in to cover my shame and modesty. Surely seeing me naked would have pushed him over she edge...if there was an edge to begin with. He took me out to the meadow, it was beautiful, we were alone, like really alone and in the middle of nowhere. He didn't use his super hot, and maybe a little creepy, super powered strength to strangle me, have his way with me, whatever way that may be. He used it to warn me. He told me he was wrong for me, _he_ told _me_, and tells me over and over, that we can't be together.

Dangerous? _No_. I don't believe it.

The comic taunts me still, the vampire and his stupid face. Not one bit scary now. The woman no longer looks scared either. She just looks...funny, theatrical. I rip the page out and throw the rest under my bed.

I need answers, I need my life to feel normal again. I need school and Nettie. I need a _vampire_.

_I need Jasper. _

-o-

"Where have you been?" Alice whispers in the dark.

"Why are you whispering?" The whole family can hear. If they choose to.

"It's polite."

"And interrogating me isn't. So leave." She forces her black lashes over her eyes, the very ones that hold the pity I don't want to see.

"You told her?"

"What do you think!"

"What did she say? How did she react?"

"You already know. So why are you asking?" She looks hurt, annoyed. "Unless... Dear sister, _you_ _can't_ _see_?"

"I can see just fine."

"Then tell me."

"She hasn't decided."

"But you see _something_. You see _her_..."

"I see her."

We sit for a long time. The world around me not so new, but the details are always gaining, always refreshing. There are always new things to see. A second look, or in my case, one hundred times over. One hundred times over I tried to read Bella. If only I could just read her. Her heart beat rapidly, thumping in her chest, screaming afraid. For her own good. She needed to be. Yet all I yearned for was to hold her and tell her I would never hurt her like I knew she was imagining.

All the while, thirsting for her, always thirsting for her. A trip. A fall. I wouldn't have to make the choice, I wouldn't have to decide. The blood rushing to the surface of a new cut. And I hate myself for it.

"You feel guilty." She is infuriating.

"About what exactly?"

"You crave her. In all the ways."

"What is your point, Alice? Do tell."

"You're allowed to be pissed off, Edward. Angry even. But go pick a fight with a mountain lion or something. Just not with me. Not now."

"Why? Why can't I? When I...if you had of... Just get out!"

"No."

"Then shut up."

Jasper appears at the door. Jasper appears to save his girl. As if he would ever need to. Not from me. Jasper appears to hand out the warning, a look between men. _You are my brother but..._

I get it.

"You think I should have seen this coming. You think I could have warned you."

"Why didn't you?"

"I only saw _you_. I knew about her, my head, in my head, but I saw you happy and... That's _all _I know. That's all I _knew_. Until it changed, and now, I'm as blind as you."

Jasper sits beside me. Earthed between them. I wish I was them. I wish I had that.

The void is altogether too much. If there were ever a time I wanted to live. It's now. If there were ever a time I wanted to die. It's now. The rushing madness, gripping tight to my skin, telling, yelling at me to go to her are too much, are too tight. I might explode tonight without her. I might not make the right decisions. I might not make this life without her.

"You have to go in tomorrow. Stay on campus. Both of you." Alice is far away. Alice is always searching someone's life.

"Why?"

"Bella has questions."

-o-

I told them I was leaving.

I told them in my best grownup you-can't-stop-me-since-you-don't-want-me-around-anyway voice. My dad looked sad, his face covered by his fluffy beard no longer seemed friendly and childlike - now just sad, deeply sad. My mom just left the room without a word.

Packing to go back to school was weird, almost like I was leaving for my first day again, everything seems so different now.

I am determined to talk with Jasper when I get back, I can think of nothing else, and I am determined to learn this, maybe see this from someone else's view, someone who doesn't have a vested interested. The thought of walking up to him, this stranger boy, this...other vampire. I have to remember all over again that I'm not dreaming a kind of crazy. I sit on my bed and collect it all over and over, the information, the facts of how this is now. My fingers wrap themselves in the covers, pulling the blanket into me, surrounding me. I could sleep. I could just sleep it all away and wake up when I know more, know how to be me, _more_. Because maybe I do know how to handle this, just not yet. I could. Just sleep.

Except...my dad is waiting, he's pacing, I hear him pacing and now and then he comes upstairs just to...hover.

Nope. I'm ready for this.

"Mom didn't want to see me off?"

He doesn't answer me right away and I know it's because he's choosing his words carefully, like, he doesn't want to hurt me with them. As if I would be.

"She went to work, Bells. Wanna stop by?"

As if we could. "I'm fine. A fight is probably unwise at this point, you know how she gets..."

He's not working right now and I worry he has too much time to wonder about things. I worry he isn't happy and as I watch him while he drives, I catastrophize the mess of a divorce, bedsit sized apartments, single occupancies and dirty socks. Mom is wound tight, and I sometimes think dad is just waiting, waiting for her to become completely unbalanced.

We pull up at school and I'm nervous, for all the wrong reasons, my tummy spins and spins.

"You'll call me...for _anything_. It doesn't matter if it's three in the morning, promise? I worry about you out here all alone...I'm just _minutes _away though, okay? Promise me?"

"Okay, dad. I'll be fine. Thank you for bringing me. And um...be good to each other, okay? Think about the dirty socks."

I leave and he's confused I think. Though he smiles like, it really doesn't matter what I say - I smile, he smiles.

I love my dad. And I think I just lost my nerve. The yellow-purple walls, and frames of strangers back home will do. The predictable faces of my mom that make my insides hurt, will do. Won't they?

Never. I just wish...I just wish Edward was here.

* * *

**_AN:_**

_The Boy pre-reads, and leaves me cute notes in the margin. We're silly. And it's luff. _  
_**Next chapter: A week or so.** _

_I teased this chapter on my blog on Monday. For more and to stay in the loop type thing that is Lumina and other wordy stuff I may write, subscribe/follow: samroseyfiction . wordpress . com  
_

**_I also wrote an original one shot and donated it to SU4Katalina for our lovely Kroseph. For more info on how to donate and to get the compilation, go to: katalina . fandomcause . info_**

_I appreciate you.  
Please and thank you!  
samrosey. xo_


	17. I, Human You, Vampire

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

* * *

**_I, Human... You, Vampire_**

The door to J.J's class is open, the room taking students slowly. She is not here yet, not close yet, the pit of my stomach sunken to the depths of me waiting. Always waiting. I am not certain if going in is wise. With proximity comes intimacy. With the language comes sex, comes me dragging her body out into the world with me. Not to mention the last time we were both in attendance, she fainted. I yelled, roaring at those who dared to move her. I am certain. I won't go in. I can see from here, take her in from here. Attempt to figure out what she wants, from here. She gives me nothing in the face of her eagerness. Just want. She wants everything. To feel. To have answers to questions not yet born.

The strangers roam, the halls are full, filling loads of minds I wish I knew. Hiding strangles me but what else is there?

In this stolen minute, the sense of relief absolves me of all this mess. She cures what ails me in all of my ways. Her scent is alarming. _Lilac_. Today she smells of lilac. She is a wall of flowers, ready for picking, as I catch her scent. Her footsteps, her breathing. Across the parking lot. Through the automatic doors, a reflection of herself, a hitch, warm bodies, avoiding, more steps, steps to find me. To find French. She wonders if I will show. She contemplates the outcome either way. Bella darling, I am lifeless, black inertia, dying in my unmovable state as I watch you, walking in your purple dress, thighs meet knee-socks, socks meet boots. Hands clasp bags of words you wonder. Bella darling, I would step out, step out and take fingers, fingers lingering to find, into mine, and France we would be. Whispers be damned. Gossips fooled plenty.

Bella darling, now she is gone. The door is closed. The faces all as one.

My leave is heavy. The pull is as strong as ever. Time, she needs more time. Alice gave instruction. I wait. I can wait however more.

-o-

He isn't here. French is getting harder, everything is harder. People are looking, people I don't know, have yet to meet and now, probably won't. I'm the girl who fell to the floor in a slump of crazy, my crush crushing me hard, quite literally. But they don't know. _How could they know?_ I have seen at least two people in here with Jasper. At least two of them disappearing at games with the group of them. Maybe _they _know, maybe _everybody _knew about vampires but me.

Wouldn't everybody be talking about it though? Why aren't they? My thoughts are twisty, spiralling out of control, I can't take any of it in, and my next class isn't any better.

At lunch, I can't face any of it, I can't stomach anything.

More classes blur together with no sign of Edward.

"Bella!" Nettie flies at me, wavy hair decorated with plaits, swirly skirts and boot laces bobbing against each other. She runs at me, hitting me hard, her arms wrapping around my neck.

"I missed you. And I met someone. Well, met is...not entirely true. More like, I stalk them in hopes of dancing into their lives with effortless charm."

"_Sounds_ effortless."

"Are you back now?" Rose asks, looking around. She holds her books in one hand, the other held on to a boy. _A man. _

"Hey, I'm Bella."

"Emmett." They say it at the same time, their voices high and low, meeting perfectly in the middle. He's tall, his arms are thick, his hair is black, and his eyes are...familiar.

"Do I know you? I mean..."

"_Way_ to be weird, B." _Sorry Rose._

"Sorry, I... I'm back from crazy town, ignore that, ignore me, pleased to meet you." _Don't ignore me._ I really might be mental. His fucking eyes, they're everywhere, watching me. I am in need of like, people, other people and real life stuff.

Not nightmares. Not scary stories.

_Edward_.

He said I would see him. He said he would be here.

"Hey, you know that grungy kid, um, _Jasper_, know where I can find him?" Nettie's eyes light up at my mention of him. She's been stalking Jasper?

"I am so glad you're back." She pulls my arm and we head across campus. Rose follows, and I can hear them talking behind us, I look back to see his arm wrapped around her as they walk. Her cheeks are like plums, like really round plums, her eyes disappear into her smile. She's happy.

"So, what's _he _like?"

"I feel like I have so much to tell you." Her excited giggles turn to weird ecstatic sing songs as she skips, pulling me faster. "So this group, they're...well, they're cool, and, _oh_, your Edward hangs out with them. I think some of them are kind of related but he hasn't been around so... Anyway, we can finally stop watching, Bella. Emmett is friends with them and Rose is happy for us to join."

Join? She makes it sound like a cult. Edward hangs out with them. He and Jasper are related. My brain is whizzing again, and I can't hear any of what she's saying now.

"Edward was at my house."

"What?" I just blurted it out. Fuck.

"Edward. He... After he took me home. He came to see me."

"What happened? Did you... Are you... You're totally mingling. Are you having fun?"

"_Sex_, _Net_. Just say sex."

"Fine. Are you having sex with him?"

"We haven't even...kissed."

"Oh. Well, that's cool. He's definitely interested in you. Rose told me he carried you out of here like Prince Charming."

_Yeah. Edward is my Prince Charming. One kiss and... I'll be dead._

I realise we're walking across the field, heading towards the bleachers, it's December, and the nights are here so soon. The sky is a blue, covering us slowly in night.

"There she is."

"Who?" I see about seven people huddled in front of us, about twenty feet away. Two or three more of them linger off to the right. Among the seven are two girls, the rest are boys.

"Alice, that's who." Alice Cullen. Edward's sister. Sitting on my bed, he told me about his family. Carlisle and Esme, Jasper and Alice, and another brother, he never mentioned his name.

"You like Alice?"

"_She's_ beautiful."

"_She_ has a boyfriend."

"Love is free, B."

"I don't think other people see it that way, Nettie."

"Actually, see _her_," Nettie points to the other girl, a tall redhead, I think her name is Siobhan, I think she's in J.J's class with me and Edward. "She was talking the other day about how Alice used to date a girl from _dubvee two_, but the girl got taken out of school by her parents and they never saw her again."

She got taken away, like sent away. Or removed for being crazy due to the very real fact that Alice is a vampire and she knew? Maybe she couldn't handle it. Maybe she told people and it wasn't her parents who removed her. _Maybe_...maybe Alice..._killed_ _her_.

And in this very moment, it's that I am reminded how dangerous this all is. How dangerous this is for my friends.

"Don't you get it? It means I might be in with a chance. She's like the stars, B. She's like a shiny star in the deep, dark night and I _must _have her as mine."

"I don't know if that's such a good idea. It could get messy. Her and Jasper are like...true love or something."

"Did Edward tell you that? What did he say?"

"_Nothing_. No. He just mentioned them, family stuff. They're the real deal is all."

"And related. What's with that?" Rose asks, now standing to my left. Emmett nowhere to be seen.

"They're like...adopted or something. I think." I don't know where that came from, and she should know, didn't Emmett tell her? _Did _Emmett tell her? Either way, I'm not sure - _oh they're all vampires - _related by blood, but like, _by _blood, _from _blood, due to the very blood they drink from, as in, immortal kin would go over well. So it's totally cool, carry on. _I lied._ Either way, it's begun.

And with that, my feet are no longer attached to the rational part of me. Only the reckless part of me lives as I walk, one foot in front of the other unsteady, positively unsure foot as I head for Jasper.

I don't know what they think, what they think I'm doing as I walk away from the only safety net I've known since I came here. I never knew I was like that really - afraid. Afraid of talking to people. I think really I'm just afraid of their faces, and all that face pulling, and what their faces say that their words don't. What's worse is that they don't think I see. _I see_. And when I came here I still saw it except, mostly I saw them _not_ seeing. Not seeing me. Which is sometimes worse. So, eventually, I stopped talking, stopped trying, and now I avoid the face pullers. I avoid them looking right through me, right past me like I mean nothing. I may mean nothing to them. But I mean _something_. I mean something to someone.

So now I walk away, towards something different and scary, I walk away from Nettie, holding onto me. She's my best friend, Rose too, who is still so closed, offering just the tiniest parts, not just to me but to most people. She's her _own_ secret. And now I have one to keep. I have Edward. Or at least, I could. I think. And his _life_ is...different. The different I'm heading towards. He didn't look through me, past me. That whole time I was looking at him, he was looking at me too.

So now I walk. To seek the knowledge I know _he_ won't give me. If he thinks I'm in, if he thinks I want this still, regardless of his _life_...he won't show me anymore. He will continue to scare me away.

But not Jasper. I hope.

"Swan." Jasper nods. He is surrounded by...vampires. _Maybe_. He _is_ a vampire. _Definitely_. And this might not be a good idea. This might be like a stupid, stupid idea.

"Speak!" The redhead is scary. And Irish. Scary, Irish, and pale. Her eyes are dark, but like, burgundy. Not like Edward's. Like contacts. Everyone must think they're contacts. They're so much like blood. Standing there like that, they're all so _different_, now that I see. Now that I see them all in a row like that.

"She's deciding. _Again_. Aren't you, Bella?" She knows who I am. Of course, she does. I wonder what she thinks, what she told him. If she told him to stay away from me. Human. Stupid. Stupid. Human.

"I came to talk to Jasper." Her face is cat like, Alice's face. Like a Cheshire Cat. She has this smile, all knowing and all powerful. She moves like a cat too, as she slides through the bars, she moves slowly, precisely, smiling at me the whole time.

"_Pretty_. Is she yours?" A dark-haired boy, another vampire. _I'm just gonna go ahead and assume...another vampire._ Licking his lips, faces me, arms outstretched, big arms, not unlike Emmett. Who still isn't back. Jasper looks at him and shakes his head. They're communicating. Can they do that? Without talking, do they have like, powers? Vampire powers? Spinning crazy, my brave is about to disappear, Nettie and Rose standing behind me now.

"Come on, B. Let's go, we'll come back later."

"No. Jasper, can we talk please? About Edward, it's about Edward."

Dirty blonde hair and big boots, walking towards me in big boots that look twice the size of my own, and all I can think of is how fast. I wonder how fast I would have to run to outrun them. There are so many of them.

"On my own, 'kay? You can wait for me, but not here. Go back to our room, and um, I'll explain later. Please?" I can't tell them but, I don't want them to wait here either.

"Why are you acting so weird?" Rose is always so straight. So true. So few words. So well at seeing. I don't want to lie.

"People, Rose. Just people."

"We can come with you, you know we would come, right?" Nettie doesn't get intimidated easily.

"I'm fine. _Go_, and _wait_?"

"We'll wait." Nettie pulls Rose away. Their quick legs, rushing to normal. I should be rushing to normal.

"Let's go, Swan. Don't worry, they're not gonna eat you."

"_Funny_. That was...funny. You're a funny guy. Oh wait, _vampire_. Funny vampire." Normal looks good right about now. _What is wrong with me?_ I should be spinning. But there is no more spinning, just...palpitations. I have palpitations. "I'm sorry, I don't know what's..."

"It's cool. Relax."

"The art building has empty rooms, all these empty rooms on the top floor. Let's go there..._to talk_. It's cold and dark and..."

"Vampires. I get it."

"No. I just...Edward knows. He'd know that's where I would go, and if..."

"If this goes badly, he'll save you. You think you might need saving from me?"

"_No_. But... This is not normal. This is _not_ normal for me. Vampires. _You're_ a vampire, and Alice _is_...and, are they all vampires?"

"Yes."

"Is Emmett?"

"I should hope so."

"What does that mean?"

"_Dear brother of mine_."

"Oh."

"Don't worry."

"About what?"

"Your friend. You're worried about Rosalie."

"Of course."

"But not about yourself?"

"I'm just trying to..._know_. I just want to know if... _I feel crazy._ I feel like I found a piece of me that was waiting... But it's soaked in blood now. And I don't know if I can take it. I _want_ it, the piece. _He's_ the piece and I _do_ want it. But, it's bloody, and messy, and..."

"_Scary_."

"Yes." Understatement.

"It's alright to be afraid, Bella."

"I know."

"Do you?" He asks me like it should be clear.

"Of course. _I know_. But he pushes me away. I know now, why he pushes and...if I'm scared, he won't want to want this anymore. He'll push so hard, the piece won't fit anymore. And I want the piece."

"He prefers humans." Eating humans? Drinking from humans? _I can't take this._ "The whole vampire thing. He's not like those guys. They have this game, Liam, Siobhan and the others. They pick out scents and well...he doesn't play. Edward prefers humans."

"He prefers humans." More palpitations.

Two classes left in session. Two classes full of people _not_ trying to figure out whether the first real thing to happen...the first real thing to happen since the trauma of my only other real thing to happen dangles in the shadows of my yester-life. The stairwell is dark, Jasper walks behind me. I'm looking for the scared. I'm looking for the fear but, it's not really here. Still, I feel like maybe if I reach for it, really reach out for it, it's lurking. It's a fake out.

I push the doors open, nobody's here. It feels like months, years since I have painted. It's only been weeks.

"I don't want to lose myself in this."

"Vampires?"

"How do I make it okay to move forward? How do I... _He's not human_. What did _you_ do?"

"You should talk to him. Tell _him_ all of this."

"I don't know if he wants to hear it. He's too worried about hurting me."

"He could hurt you. In lots of ways, Bella. This is no joke."

"I know it's real. Don't you think I know it's real when he...when we, and everything around me...it's too much. I felt like I was dying, like the ground beneath me was about to open up and I was dying, sinking deep into the depths of...but still, all I wanted was for him to...I just want to be normal. But it's not. And I'm trying here, I'm trying to make it happen. So just...I _know_ it's real. _I know._" I'm yelling. Shouting. He could kill me right now. Easily. And I'm shouting.

"_Breathe_."

"I'm breathing. I'm fine. _I'm fine_."

"Now. You're fine _now_."

"What?" He's so perplexing.

"_Sshh_. Just wait."

"What are you doing? Jasper..."

"How do you feel?"

"How do you think I feel? I feel...fine." _I feel fine. _

"Close your eyes."

"Why?"

"Close your eyes, Bella."

"You're so bossy."

"I am. Now close them, and be quiet. Tell me what you feel." This is weird. But weird seems to be my life now.

"You're not gonna touch me are you?" Because that would be bad. Really bad.

"It doesn't work like that. That will only happen with Edward."

"What am I supposed to be feeling exactly?"

"You're angry. You weren't angry a minute ago."

"_So_."

"How do you feel now?" He keeps asking me over and over, like it will just change.

"The same." I feel the same!

"Wait for it..."

He's not touching me. He's sitting on the table. I'm by the window. I'm all the way over by the window, confused. Every minute, something new pops into my head, new questions, all the things I should be asking. All the things I want to know..._need_ to know to be able to do this.

"You're confused."

I am.

"You're not angry anymore. Just. Impatient. Tired. Needy." A new step realised with every new word he speaks.

"How do you know?"

"It's a gift." He says.

"Like, powers. You have one?" Freaking powers. And super strength. _My god._

"Something like that."

"So you can read people?" He knows my thoughts?

"No."

"I don't understand." I really don't.

"Think of it as a calming agent. I'm calming you. Projecting a sense of calmness."

"A gift. Does Edward have one?"

"Not exactly."

"What do you eat?" I don't know that I really want to know.

"We should go." He's standing now. Waiting for me, making me.

"You can't get shy on me now, come on."

"It's personal." Maybe I shouldn't have asked. Maybe it's exactly the question I should be asking.

"Tell me." But I can't stop. This is my chance.

"Every vampire is different."

"What about you? What about Edward?"

"_Bella_." He's giving me the creepy eyes. Creepy, dark, vampire eyes.

It's always the eyes.

"It's not gonna work. You calmed me, remember. I am calm. _Zen_. Check me out!"

I feel so much better, but I don't know if this is real. I think it's the fake out. And all at the same time, I feel like I still need to learn so much more. And on the way out, I don't even have to look. I know. _He's here._ I don't even have to see. I knew Edward would come.

I haven't seen him all day but I believed him when he said he would be here, that I would see him again.

Has he been here all day? Did he see me approach them?

"Jasper."

"Swan."

"Thanks. _Thank_ _you_."

"Anytime. Welcome to the family."

_Family? _

Standing in the shadows underneath the vent, I'm in a movie. All of a sudden I'm in a movie, and he is James Dean, leaning perfect against the wall, waiting for me. For his girl. I could be the girl in this movie, his leading lady. Am I leading lady material? Either way, I'm running, I feel like I'm running my feet feel so light. My legs, moving all by themselves. He's leaning against the tech building, like he was before when I saw him out here. Like he was before...when he was watching me, waiting for me, not for the other girl, the invisible girl.

"_Stalker_."

"You're chipper. Should I be worried?"

"I'm _zen_." He's sexy. He's quiet. Sharp. His words are sharp. And he smells _divine_.

"Find what you were looking for?"

"Did _you_?" He was waiting for me. Before. And now. Like I knew he would.

"You're here aren't you."

* * *

_**AN:** _

_The Boy plays around with my words. I like it._  
_**Next chapter: A week or so.**_

_Vampire treats for Halloween! What are you going as? _

_Please and thank you! _  
_samrosey. xo_


	18. I Only Have Eyes For You

_**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**_

* * *

_**I Only Have Eyes For You**_

"You're here, aren't you." She is a talking, walking, brand new fascination, exponentially sending waves of attraction and seduction my way. She walks ahead, facing me backwards, staring at me, challenging me, promising me with her expressive face, beaming smile and darkly gaze, I am caught in.

"I'm here." Her legs are clumsy as one foot crosses the other.

"And you're _zen_." Determined has left her, intoxicated greets me. One might say she seems almost blissful, the softest touch of red warming her cheeks. I'll never be used to the rushing force her scent sends through my body, the intense tightening of my muscles as I attempt to stop myself from hunting her.

"Thanks to Jasper." She says, so pleased.

"Hmm." Of course. Not because of me then.

"Hmm?" She's still looking at me, her eyes glistening, glazed with the effects of my brother and his strings, pulling strings inside. He can touch her, without touching her. I cannot do either. There has to be a way to be closer, feel closer, be inside without actually being inside.

"Just hmm." She questions everything.

"No, not _just_. It's never easy. And you are lousy with more, with all the things I don't know. You're very mysterious, Edward Cullen." I'm enforcing the take back, and I do, because this is false bliss. A false sense of what's ahead. How can she be happy with only nothing? Not feeling us realised, only living off the potential of what we can be. Lost sensations unable to find their way. She is high on Jasper's tricks.

"Okay, Bella. Show me your room." I want inside.

"You've seen my room."

"No. I have seen the things you left behind. Show me here, show me the rest."

"But_ they'll_ be in the room. And they will be like, _girls_. Acting like girls, asking all of their girl questions."

"You, are a _girl_, Miss Swan."

"I'm messy." She is. I have seen her objects of desire, pretty effects and mess. Lots of mess, I recall.

"Show me anyway." Should I admit to intruding, I wonder. She knows I watched her sleeping. Just as I watched her in class today. Just as I watched her walk the green mile to the others. The other vampires. She wonders if we are the same. She wants to learn me, about me, from them. Bella beautiful, wants to hang out with blood suckers to see if I'm dangerous. And I am. But they are more so. Childish demons, playing games with the humans. Toys. She isn't one. Not to me. She could be the greatest. My greatest. Except she wants to learn from Jasper. Boy vampire with a present to pry the emotions, change the emotions.

I want to see all that she is. No pushing and pulling to mould the girl into another. If I cannot feel her difference, touch her difference or be inside all of what makes us different, then this cannot be.

So show me.

"So show me..." Hands in my pockets, I hold on tight to the cloth between my fingers, for my fingers long to grasp another completely. They want to hold her. To take her. Carelessly, and greedily. But they can't. I can't. So I walk, moving away from the temptation, dancing circles, just as she did. "Stop thinking so much, my dear." I bow, charming her. She has no choice but this one.

"Okay, fine. But don't say I didn't warn you." Stomping boots, she pretends to protest. She came around so quickly. I wonder if she is imagining me amongst her things. On her bed perhaps.

She's quiet as we enter the building. The echos of freshman vomiting up their first, and probably not their last, beer. The parties are only just beginning. Gaggles of giggling girls falling over themselves to get to some guy, any guy really, it doesn't seem to matter. It will be another one next week. Oh, human lust. There is plenty of it, and plenty to be had. Perhaps it's the years that set me apart, or maybe it's simply the hatred I carry in abundance for most humans. Bella is different. Being my singer makes her incomparable, truly distinct. Regardless of why, or for what reason, there is no doubt in my mind that since the shift - occurring without warning, without room to move - I am left with no hope of ever finding another. Bella is it for me. It's in the fine points of her everyday living, the smallest details of her movements. The greatest sounds of her words as I listen for every last one, she calls to me. Only as the time began to move on from then to now - when she collapsed, lying asleep before me, to the Meadow, when I began to show my true self to her, and now, as we try to be real. It is with great certainty that I can say, I am in love with this human girl. So yes there is _only_. For now. But as the time continues to move, we will hunger, and when we look for that nourishment, that satisfaction from each other, we will starve. Because there comes a definite time when the _only_, is not enough.

"Ready?" I ask.

"Ready." She's worried.

"They won't know. And you don't have to tell them." That I'm a monster.

"I know." Her stressed out heart hurts my still one. "But thanks."

She pushes the door open to two girls and my brother. Emmett.

Emmett came to me a few nights ago with news of his courtship.

_"Dude, I'm not asking for permission. I figured you'd wanna know since they're BFFs and all."_

_"BFFs. Right."_

I see now that I should have taken it upon myself to inform Bella. Rose _might_ already know about me, about us, after all.

"Bella!" Nettie bounces towards us. "And... Edward. Hi."

"Hello." She eyes me, and surprisingly takes both of our hands, not at all flinching from the difference of my skin to her own. It is highly unusual for humans to make uninitiated contact with us like this, their instincts often keeping them away.

Bella eyes our joined fingers.

"Wanna smoke with us? Jasper and Alice are bringing some over."

"_Now?_" I say, really only asking Emmett as I imagine the scene. I'm being ambushed. Spied on.

"Reinforcements. Or in your case..." Emmett's gestures of a limp penis are amusing to no one but himself.

The girls stand in the bathroom, door open, whispering. I could listen, if I choose to. Does Bella know that? I plan to know all of everything that occurred in the attic between her and Jasper and what he told her about us. About vampires.

"Bro." Emmett shakes his head at me, but there's no need for me to move closer, as he speaks to me in his quietest voice - a whisper of his own, if you will. No human ear is capable of hearing it as his voice is inaudible to anyone but other vampires. We use it only for instances like this, for situations such as this. "Alice is freaking out."

"Why?" Alice is always worried about something. Usually me.

"Because you told. And _I_ told."

"Rose knows?" Rose knows, yet she hasn't warned Bella. Interesting. I wonder if Bella will choose to share the secret with either of them.

"Hell yeah. You know I can't handle secrets and shit."

"Of course."

"So yeah. That's why she's coming over. Oh and, prolly for the hippy chick."

"Incestuous." We are The Romantics.

"You're twisted." For a while now, they have spoken about finding a girl for Alice to enjoy. The family knows of their plans, and supports whatever they choose as long as it's right for them, and nobody gets hurt again.

"If you say so." Bella is fishing around inside a bag for something. Rose is touching her face, and Nettie is sitting on the counter talking about how it will be different this time.

_"It's standard. The first time is always weird."_

I wonder what Bella's first time was like, and who it was with. If he was kind, or just a horny teenager taking all he could get from her.

Images of her with another, pollute my mind. Her hair, flowing sexy down her naked back. Her hands pressed into his chest as she moves wildly on top of him.

Smoking. They're talking about smoking.

"Bella." My words are like acid. I don't mean for them to be.

"What's wrong?" Wide eyes search me.

"Occupy me?" I beg.

"Um, what do you wanna do? Wanna get high with us?"

I move over to her bed. I only know it's hers from my earlier intrusions. I only knew it was hers because of her scent.

"Remember the party? I had been testing my limits with that stuff for months. Do you want to try?"

"Anything's possible, right?"

"Our connection is stronger now. I can't be sure it will actually work." She has to prepare for failure, she has to prepare for how it could make her feel. I won't hurt her again. I _will_ control myself.

"But it's something." She sits next to me, her leg shaking with an impatience, with an anxiety I cannot soothe.

"It's imperative that you know it may not work." Her lips, trembling. Her breath, stuttering. An eager anticipation overwhelming her. I raise my hand, fingers whispering along her hair, my words so close she could steal them. "But we _will_ try."

A knock at the door pulls us from our only way of having.

"It's time!" Nettie skips towards the door, wired, constantly wired. She is naturally high. I like that in a human.

-o-

Jasper and Alice appear and I remember the face she showed me from earlier, her feline face of a vampire as she watched me walk away with the love of her life. Edward said I was a singer. He will never want another. If I choose it, he would be tied to me forever. _Forever_. Except I don't have forever. I look at Edward and he is staring at me, at my face. Sometimes when he looks me, I feel like I could die, it's too much. It's all so much, I can't breathe.

"They won't hurt you." He speaks and I feel like it's all for me. His body, facing me, his hands close to where they want to be. His words, so quiet, like air.

"They don't like me." Jasper seemed kind of cool but I don't think he was thrilled to be speaking with me.

This room is too small for all of these people. Larger than life people. Except, these people aren't even people. It seems like all of a sudden, I am seeing three vampires. My friends. And three vampires. All in a room together, and Edward. So many vampires.

"Welcome to the family."

"What?" Edward asks and I still have so many questions. This isn't like a normal relationship between a boy and a girl. The only other person I have ever known that thought of me as more than a friend was... homegrown. It was slow, easy. Like family. But not. I didn't have to try. There were no mysteries. No secrets. It was like, a practice run. This is so scary new, and potentially life threatening. It's way lusty and all I want is him. I crave him. Already I crave him. How he looks, the things he says, and how he smells. He walks into a room, and I am enveloped in Edward. Nobody else exists but him.

"Never mind. Can we try now?" I feel like I'm begging. _Nobody exists but him. _

We all move to sit on the floor, making a circle of purple cushions in the shape of huge buttons, green and blue blankets covering limbs, tangled. A glass bong I have never seen before. Nettie sits between Alice and Jasper. I sit between Jasper and Edward. A baggy of weed and a bottle of water. Edward takes out a lighter, it's black and fits between his fingers expertly as he flips the lid and lights it. The way he watches the flame is intense. Orange and gold. He drags me in, and a few seconds later he closes the lid - I want to know what he's thinking.

Passing around the bong seems to take forever and I am completely mesmerised by how each one takes a hit. Rose looks at everyone in the room before she takes a turn, pushing her hair behind her ears, pretty fingers clasp the instrument. Her eyes close as she breathes in. She holds it in for only a few seconds as she passes it to Emmett. The sucking sound is monstrous, drowning out the music - now soft whimpers of something I don't know. I think it's the radio, but I could be wrong. Rose leans into Emmett as he passes it to Edward. Edward takes two hits, and he holds them in so long barely any smoke comes out when he exhales. At this point, the others are impatient and I know I'm being watched. They're watching me because I have something they want. They're watching me because I'm with Edward, and he told me their secret. Do they wonder if I'll get high and make a scene? I do.

The pull is heavy, hot, my throat burns and my fingers tremble. I see only the ceiling as my eyes finally close, the sweet anticipation of touching Edward washing over me. A few more hits and we'll try.

I miss Jasper's turn, only catching up as he moves to face Alice. She smiles and looks at me before breathing in the smoke. _What is her deal?_ I feel like I'm supposed to be afraid of her but she's so animated and engaging, I don't know if I can be. She breathes in, and he kisses the side of her mouth before she turns to face Nettie. Jasper hovers like an animal, watching his girlfriend and her new toy. Alice sits across Nettie's legs, her skirt riding up to show her ripped tights. The whole room is watching them. Even Rose. The air is thick with the smell of our inhibitions leaving us, the swarm of our sexual intentions hitting me square in the face. My mouth is dry, my head is spinning, Edward sits to my right but I can't look at him. His whispers are lusty and unclear as Alice moves closer, her black-cherry lips part, and smoke passes from her to my friend. Nettie is really pretty. When she said she would practice kissing with me, I thought it would be weird because I didn't know if I would like it. In this moment. I feel like I would. I feel like, if kissing was anything like this, I definitely would. Alice calls Nettie her "kitten" as she lies back, Alice now straddling her.

I can't watch this. I feel like, like I want this when really I just want Edward. I want to be lying underneath Edward while he calls me kitten. I want to feel him pressed against me, down there, pressed against me everywhere.

"Sorry, big brother." Edward takes the bong before it goes back to Rose and Emmett.

He takes not two but three more hits after packing it with more weed.

"Bella?" I take one more as he stands, and when I'm done, I follow him over to my bed, the room separated by music. It's definitely not the radio - the synthy sounds of Everything All The Time is playing on shuffle.

Edward lies back, surrounded by my things, pressed to my sheets, and I think about the others. I decide I don't care, I decide I've waited for this since he first sat next to me. I decide they're too stoned at this point to even notice what we're doing.

I lie on the bed and we face each other, Edward pulls a pillow from under him and places it between us.

The room is like, heavy. Like a fog has descended. My head on the pillow is a dream come true as my senses are more real now, they're something I can name now. I hear the others whispering and giggling, playing and kissing. The paranoia is trying to take over but I don't want it.

"I don't want it."

"What?" Edward is lying on my bed with me, confused.

"I don't want to be scared."

"Being scared is easy. Realising you don't need to be, is harder." Edward's eyelashes touch his cheek when he looks down. I wait for him to blink so I can see them again. I feel like I'm waiting for a long time when my eyes start to sting and I close them.

"You don't blink." I tell him.

"No. I don't."

"Ever?" _Never?_

"No. Not at all." No blinking. Check.

"Do you cry?" I wonder.

"No." He looks like he's waiting for me to freak out.

"Do you dream?" I wonder if he dreams about me.

"I don't sleep." Oh.

"None of you?" They don't all have gifts, so maybe...

"None of us."

"Is that boring?" I ask.

"You have no idea." I wonder what it's like for him. If we seem, if _I_ seem different and scary to _him_. "Bella, are you ready?"

"Yes." I realise I am crazed with several powerful emotions. "Yes. I'm ready." And scared. I'm not strong enough to be anything else. I'm not wise enough to know if that choice is real.

The voice of Ben Bridwell echoes through my head as the tragic sounds of anything, ever, take me over. I think I might cry, waiting. I think I might explode, as finally, his fingertips brush my cheek. It feels amazing. Like light, like there are a thousand tiny stars surrounding me, holding me to this spot. I open my eyes as the beats get louder, the feel of his skin on my skin as the crescendo finds it's tipping point is shattering, smashing any thought I ever had of what this would feel like. He lips are wet from his tongue, pressed together as his fingers dance along my temple and back down to my cheek - he finds me everywhere, he finds me smiling. I don't feel like dying. I'm not falling down a dark scary hole alone, and the world isn't drowning out, only the music is as the crashing tragedy turns to tinkering, something calling me softly. He's smiling now, smiling sexy cute, his thumb sweeps my mouth, pulling at my bottom lip a little. He's staring at me. His lashes fluttering as he moves from my eyes to where he holds me. He looks, hungry. And for a second I wonder if it's lust or something else. Whether it's the something more that could end me in a second. All I hear now are blood curdling screams. I close my eyes, tightly squeezing the images away.

"This kiss..." His words are like a popping inside my heart, popping one by one. The air leaves the room as he moves closer, infinitely closer. His fingers brush my hair away from my face, pushing the strands behind my ear. And I tingle, tingling in my toes, in my tummy. Butterflies tickling each other as the flutter of the beating drums inside me thrum, his kiss imminent.

"...might be the death of you." He presses his forehead to mine. "Don't worry, we have time."

His words make me feel hollow. And it takes actual effort to think, to breathe as the foggy haze of being stoned takes me under. I feel like my heart just fell out of me.

* * *

_**AN:**_

_I've missed you! Time has been spent going crazy while my computer was broken, for about three weeks. Ahh! Fic land was lost to me, and I worried my words would find another while I waited to put them down. _

_The Boy continues to pre-read. Dragging him into our world is so much fun! He even came to see Breaking Dawn Part Two with me the other day! Have you all seen it? _

**_I would love to know your thoughts! _**  
_Please and thank you. _  
_samrosey. xo_


	19. Magnetization Compensation

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

* * *

_**Magnetization Compensation**_

My heart fell out of me and rolled along the floor to where my best friends were falling in love. A lust I could only feel, not have, not hold.

Now, as we sit beneath the stars, his shiny silver car saving us - saving me - from the cold, I try to fight the sadness.

I should just be happy, but I feel the looming dread of something breaking what we're trying to build, and while he's here, with me, fighting what's against us, I can think of nothing else but physically connecting him to me. Because I can't help but think of him leaving. Boring class after boring class come tomorrow when all I want is more of him, all of him.

"Why did you leave?" Edward said barely two words to me when he abruptly got up and left my room not thirty minutes ago. I followed, the others lost in their own party, stoned out of their minds. The effects have worn off for me and I suspect, Edward too.

"The room began to seem smaller...louder. Louder still." He looks down at my chest.

"Wh-..." Edward is looking at my boobs. Again.

"Your heart beats, calling to me. Your heart beats, pumping you to life and I crave it. I want you, Bella. Make no mistake. But it felt too much. You, are too much for me to take sometimes."

"What are you saying?" He wants out? This is too much trouble? No. I refuse it. There is hope left somewhere, there must be.

"I'm saying I wish I had found you eighty years ago. I'm saying I want to find you in a hundred. I'm saying, I have absolutely no precedent for this."

"For being with a human?"

"You're not the first." A knife. Stabbing at my gut as I think of him with other girls, humans - they can give him what I can't. Other vampires, sexy, confident, and unbridled - they can give him everything. "But you are perfect."

I swallow down nothing, my throat dry from the stabbing, and the silence as his words hung themselves dead between us, and then again as they were brought back to life. "Still, you are maddening. And I am crazed."

"What do you know, Edward; about what we are?" And why we can't just be like any other would be lovers.

"I know you affect my strength. I get stronger as you get weaker."

"Is that it? No reasons. No solutions. At all."

"My father has a friend, Alistair. He's an odd creature. But he knows things. He's very old, informed. Despite his disbelief, he thinks it's all some sort of trick. A trick of the mind or, perhaps even spiritual."

"Spiritual? Like, magic and legends, stuff like that?"

"What do you know about it?" He asks, his serious face in play.

"I..." Don't want to tell him. "Have a friend. He..." Hates me now. Maybe loved me once. "His family has legends. They talk about the spiritual world and what it all means. It's not about God and... It's more...earthy. Like the elements. It's all chemistry really. They believe that a person, or land, reacts to its markers. So maybe that's all it is. Chemistry."

"Chemistry." He repeats.

"What if there was a way to change my chemistry? Or yours."

"How?" He asks. As if I have the answers.

_Blood_.

The thoughts enter my mind without warning. Images of me drinking his blood, my hand clasped around his wrist as he feeds me. The pictures bury my sadness and bring about something much worse. The hope I was looking for.

"I don't know." I try to calm down. I try to act...normal. Whatever that is on a day when I just got high in order to touch my vampire boyfriend. I don't want to think of things like that. I don't want to let myself dream up nightmarish ways for us to survive this.

"What aren't you saying, Bella?"

"I want to ask you about something but I don't know if it's...silly." I try to change the subject.

"Okay." He waits, never moving, just staring at me, into me, like I'm the only thing in this world. It's encompassing, scary, and makes my heart ache, but like, in the best kind of way.

"Are _we_...are you and I... _Since we_...it's been so crazy. You were gonna leave, Edward. And then you, you're a vampire. I'm not, so...what would you say this is exactly?"

"Bella," He chuckles. Actually chuckles. Right in front of my face. And I'm embarrassed. Red faced. Ready to be eaten up by the whole of the town as it breaks open and swallows me up. "Are you asking me if you are my girlfriend?"

"Maybe..." I am suddenly five years old, asking for a second piece of candy.

"Let's be clear on something." He's no longer still, a still vampire sitting in the dark. He's a boy. A sexy smelling vampire boy, hovering over me, face to face, "I want you to be mine. Nobody elses. Mine. Whether I can press my lips to yours or not. Whether I can hold you, as we dance toe to toe. Your breath is my warmth, your words are my story." He leans back, his head resting on the seat, eyes closed. "If you want."

He is crazed. And I am aroused.

"I want." I tell him.

"Good." He says.

-o-

I relieved Bella with the knowledge of my further attempts at a solution. One which would bring her skin to mine on a more permanent basis. I hold out no hope for any real answers, but I have to try. For both of us.

Getting to touch her today took a new kind of strength, one I didn't know I possessed. Cradling that familiarity I feel when I see her, realising it physically as something for me to hold, her rosy skin, pumped full of sweet-scented blood, was like no other I have felt. I held her face in my hands for as long as I possibly could. And as the effects wore off, and the foggy haze lifted, I awoke feeling reinforced; I was powerful. _She_ makes me powerful, injecting me with her potential. Smoking the drugs only stopped me from focusing on the energy she is simply made of, from ripping her soul out with my bare hands and killing her. She is human, and smelling Bella's blood, catching her scent, is like a drug in itself. I am addicted to it, even as it drenches my tongue, and burns my throat, burning me from the inside out, I rage, ravenous for it.

I need to feed, to douse the ever present need for blood as much - or little, as the case may be - as possible when I am near her. Attempting such restraint is dangerous and I should hunt tonight, though no mountain lion or lowly deer could satisfy me after being so close to such a delicacy as Bella.

"Edward." Esme greets me as I enter the study. "Where are your siblings?"

"Canoodling with humans."

"Ah, yes. I have been informed more might be joining us soon. How is Jasper handling such a thing?"

"I wouldn't know." But I should. He feels everything, often suffering in silence as the world attempts to drown him in their emotions. Bringing himself and Alice so close to another human at this point might not be their best idea yet. "You seem incredibly unruffled about the idea of them trying again." After last time, I didn't think she would be so calm and carefree about it.

"Edward, natural life is long enough. Life for us is, eternity."

"Even still..." I offer. As if existing forever is an excuse to change everyone they meet.

"What does Bella think?" _Of becoming a vampire? _

"I don't think she realises it's even an option. Or could be."

"Isn't it?" She pushes.

"No." I walk away from her, my temper bubbling. The piano sits alone by the window waiting for my anger, or the sadness it's used to. But I won't give in. Not while Esme lingers. Not when I don't deserve it's comfort.

"You've thought about it."

"Stop." Every time she pulls at me, I am reminded how well she knows me. This life, as we so easily call it. Her children.

"It's okay to think about it, Edward. It's a natural progression for us. This selection..."

"Natural! There is nothing natural about this. There is nothing natural about the dead heart that sits rotting inside of me. There is nothing natural about living this long, in sadness, in silence. In hopeless wonder. In despair. There would be nothing natural or easy about taking her life."

My biological mother, Elizabeth, died before me. That wasn't natural either, she was taken by disease, and I should have followed her. Now Esme, my mother for all intents and purposes, moves towards me and places her hand on my back, attempting to still me. "Sit with me."

I sit at the piano with her, the rage rolling through my shoulders. I do not deserve a love. This one I feel bursting out of my chest. It's not right for me, a monster, to be capable of such human things.

"You're angry. But you're also sad."

"Stop it. I won't feel worthy of this." I grit my teeth in agony.

"Edward, you didn't ask for this. I love your father, but he chose this for you. You didn't inject yourself with venom or beg to be changed. You were dying. You were dying and he saw something... Whether or not you like it, he saved you."

I grip the insides of myself, pulling at all that's left of my today. I won't show her this. I won't throw this in her face.

"I am grateful. I am. I am not selfless or pure enough to regret choosing to go on. But it doesn't mean I embrace it either. And it doesn't mean I should take advantage of all that we are."

"All that you are, is my son. And you are drowning in this life you've chosen. Bella is special. She is your reason."

"But what if I destroy her in the process?"

"Only by loving her."

"How can I even contemplate this path for her?" I can't. Though I have. Multiple times, and I won't do it.

"It may be your only choice if you want to keep that love alive."

"What do you know about my love? I don't even know if it's real."

"Yes you do. And you should tell her." What is this love really, if I take away her life? I would be no man if I shackle her to this mess with no way out. I may be a monster, but a man does reside somewhere within me.

"Not if this is hopeless. Not if there isn't a way for us." Professing my love at this point, would only be selfish.

"I just showed you one." My mother's touch is like sleep; I miss it. But I have her comfort to keep me going.

-o-

Rose left with Emmett. Nettie is fast asleep, her head at the foot of the bed. She's still dressed in her clothes from today. I decided not to wake her, but I pulled her boots off and covered her with a spare blanket from the sets that I brought from home with me. Even in sleep, she looks happy, like she continues dancing through to her dreams. If she had it her way, she probably wouldn't sleep. Edward doesn't sleep. I wonder what he's doing right now, if he found something to help us. I pull the comic out of my pocket, crumpled and worn, I smooth out the section with the vampire's face. It's almost funny. This life I've stumbled upon. Or it would be, if it didn't feel so tragic. So full of desperation.

I am stunned by thoughts of Edward taking a life. Hunting girls and taking them off into the woods, kicking and screaming.

I went into the woods with him willingly. For months I willed him to hunt me, like an animal, craving his acknowledgment from just inches away.

Now I have it. Now I'm in it. The chase. Is it only a matter of time before one way or another, the fact that's he's a vampire and I'm not ends what we want so badly?

In some ways, I feel like I loved him before he even spoke to me.

I made up a world in my head of stories and ways in which we would like, hang out, and with each new story, he would fall madly in love with my quick wit, and my effortless charm. Instead it took me an eon to finally do it, pluck up the courage. And now we are nothing like what I imagined.

In some ways we're better, the way he makes me feel, I never imagined that.

But I know it's really just a delusion, we aren't better. How could we be?

All I know is how I feel when he's near. Protected. Excited.  
All I know is how I feel when he looks at me. Beautiful. He desires me.

_He wants to eat me. Drink my blood. That's all._

I tell myself we could fall in love. I tell myself it would be forever.

But I can't give him what he craves. Not unless...we change our chemistry.

I take out a picture book full of colours, abstract paintings I hope to be even half as good at creating myself one day. I try to get lost in my dreams, the ones I came here for, except every page is covered in blood. Reds. Pinks. Purples. Blue blood. My blood. I trace the thought with my fingers and place my other hand over my heart. He hears this, and the changes occurring when he's near, when he makes me laugh, or makes me nervous. He wants this.

_Could I give it up to be with him forever? _

I throw the book on the floor, this is ridiculous, we don't even know each other, not really.

Infatuation. That's all it is.

His deep, honey-coloured eyes, the constant surprise of something new as I fall in love with him a little more each time I look into them. The way he says my name, or how he walks, like he invented walking and only he can move in such a way. His messy yet perfect hair with a smattering of red to match my cheeks. He's beautiful.

Could I last tomorrow without him?

If I never saw him again, would I miss him?

Would time stop until I got over him?

I feel like I'm choking. The thought of him not existing to me is hurtful, stinging pain in my head hurtful, heavy weights on my chest hurtful.

I pick up my phone, I have to talk to him. See him. But I realise, I don't have his phone number. I look at my purse, a way to get to his house, but I was unconscious the last time I went there and confused on the way back.

Rose. Rose will know.

I call Rose but she doesn't pick up. I call three more times until I give up.

The meadow. He said he goes there sometimes to get away. Maybe if I go there, he will come. _But how will he know I'm there? _

Why do I feel like I'm never going to see him again? Every time he leaves, I wonder if it's the last time.

I sigh, feeling deflated.

I feel like maybe I've gone mad. I feel like maybe I'm this close to giving in and begging him to make me his forever.

I feel like, like I'm falling in love.

* * *

**_AN: _**

_The Boy tries to get into my crazy brain when he pre-reads. He wants clues and stuff. I tell him, good luck and then give him kisses instead! _

_To the lovelies that leave reviews anonymously or not signed in, I can't reply to you! So this is me telling you how thankful I am, and that I appreciate you! _  
_And I appreciate the rest of you too, I'm slow building, and your enjoyment is wonderful. _

_Please leave me a note and let me know your thoughts. _  
_Thank you! _  
_samrosey. xo_


	20. Hide and Seek

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

* * *

**_Hide and Seek_**

I pull the ceramic penguin off the shelf and try to pull the plug from its bottom. My fingers are like, way too big to fit beneath the rubber I need to grip in order to pry this thing from its house. I glued it in and it's not budging so I take it to the bathroom, and look at myself in the mirror.

Yep. I'm really doing this.

I stuff the plug in its hole, stand back from the sink and lift the penguin level with my head. I told myself I wouldn't want it. That jamming it inside the tiny hole made for coins would be perfect because I could only get it out if absolutely needed. Well, I need it.

I take another step back, afraid I'll get cut, and smack it down into the sink.

The song is screaming. The ceramic edges perfectly broken. My little penguin. Dead.

I edge towards the sink and peer in. I use the handle of my hair brush to sift through the broken money box until I spot the tiny key lying in the rubble of my secrets.

I'm skipping class, in fact probably the whole day, but this morning is important because it's the only time of day lately that Charlie is out of the house. And if I'm lucky, by the time I leave, he will pass me on the way back from the Res, none the wiser.

I pull on my boots and stare at Edwards grey coat. I never returned it after that night in the meadow. You could say I was rather preoccupied with his super speed and strength, and my super fast-growing feelings for him. I grab my bag and his coat, resisting the urge to smell it, to see if it still smells of him, and leave. Nettie left way early this morning and Rose never came home. I hope she's okay.

I wonder if Emmett is like Edward, or more like Jasper. Either way, I worry he's told her. I worry he hasn't.

I walk to my parents house, and begin to talk myself out of this, and back in again, and once more for surety. I walk the road past the hardware store, and past Newton's Outfitters where that boy from my first college party works. I walk the road with no footpath and stare into the trees imagining a new meadow behind each clearing until I finally make it to our street. Seeing my house, my dad's car gone from the driveway, I picture Edward leaning against his shiny silver Volvo, and realise he is painted at the edges of every part of my life now.

I cross the neighbour's driveway, and see Mrs Marks in the window. She smiles at me and my smile back is too small, and not like, real enough for her to see I don't think.

I stand on a pile of bricks, the very same one my dad put there for me to climb so I could let myself in and out this way. Once around back, I stand in front of the closed garage and stare at it, willing it to open on its own. It won't do. And I'm not special enough to have powers like that.

_I wonder what my gift would be?_

My head is full of this crazy life I think I could have. One where I'm a badass. One where I impress with just my looks, piercing eyes and porcelain skin, compelling the world to see me with my invisible abilities.

I don't know if I want that. All I really want is to be taken seriously by my parents. I want to hang my colours on the white walls of the most famous galleries. And I want Edward. That's what I want.

So I pull open door number one to find her sitting in the same spot as always. Rusting under my neglect, I worry she won't work after a year of doing nothing. I take the key out of my pocket and run my hand along the bonnet. She was a gift for my sixteenth birthday.

_Billy and my dad worked on her while Jake and I threw things at each other. _

_"Menaces. On second thoughts, maybe I should get you a pony. All little girls want a pony, right Bells?" Charlie Swan, down with the kids. _

_"No way. You promised." Jake started laughing, as if I was the only one to think he was even a little bit serious. I had waited years to have her as my own._

_I still remember the first time I drove her. _

_Billy and I sat up front while we waited for Charlie. Jake had crashed on the sofa, Seth and Leah had already gone home for dinner. I was starving but promised my mom I would wait and eat with them. She hated us coming down here, she had a falling out with Sue Clearwater when I was just a kid and things were never the same for her down here._

_"I don't have time." She would say. But I knew it was because she couldn't face them._

_Now, I think the accident secretly made her happy. As if like, what I did would make anyone, anywhere happy. _

_Billy told me stories about his father and his father's father while we waited, and I was hooked like a fish to his every tale. I was tiny and it was cold so I climbed up into his lap for warmth. Him and Jake were always so warm, like the sun. They were all like my second family. I hung on to the steering wheel pretending to drive listening to him talk when he stopped and said, "I bet you Charlie will be here soon. Wanna show him something special for when he gets here?"_

_I nodded, and he turned the key, the engine roaring to life. She stuttered a few times, like she always did but I was so excited. Billy hedged forward, his foot on the pedal and I gripped the wheel for dear life._

_"Hold on tight, don't let go. Easy. Easy. Left. Go left." The truck swerved. "Easy Bella. Turn it just a little, just a hair, no sudden movements. Easy." I was driving. I was driving the big red truck Jake and Leah and I would camp out in every other weekend. We would lie in the back of the truck bed, all smooshed together underneath the stars. I couldn't wait to finally be old enough to drive her. _

_Then one month before my sixteenth birthday, Charlie told me she would be mine. Only if I helped work on her. By help, he really meant keep Jake busy while he and Billy did all the grafting. They knew we were close, he was my best friend. He was my...something. _

I open the door and she creeks, the dusty silence feeling more and more like loneliness.

When I don't know how I'm supposed to feel, he's what I think of, the person I want to show up and remind me. Because Edward sees me. Somehow. He's becoming my...everything.

I get in and use the key, the engine rumbles making me smile, the sadness of remembering Billy and how he was then to how he is now, forces the tears I've been running from to sting my eyes.

-o-

The beginning of term had been just as any other new year: filled with acceptance and expectance. I expected the classes to offer me nothing new, and I had accepted that this life was to offer me no one new. Until Bella.

The first few weeks were painful. Apart from my transformation, something of a lost memory now, they were probably the most painful of my entire existence. I got to sit at the same table as her in exactly one class, one that she may very well drop next year, so I became determined to make the most of it. I tried not to count the days, losing moments gone forever, but as fire torched my throat and she became a real person with real expressions, likes, dislikes, and movements I began to guess before she made them, I was addicted. And so eventually, the fire wasn't always the first thing I noticed anymore. It was her eyes. Her smile, worried under the further expectation of social life in college. She wrote out words in another language, hidden doodles to the sweeping eye of any freshman as I tapped a new lullaby underneath the table with my fingers imagining the girl at my piano.

I told myself it was all just a fantasy. I couldn't really have her. She would see the monster, and she would run. I would want her to.

But then I felt her.

And then I held her in my hands.

And now she invades my very being with her voice.

_"Don't go."_

My fingers slide against the ivory with ease, the black steps forming words inside that I cannot say. My world is a song now, still only the softest of tinkering made from my real, very real feelings. My head is low to the keys, pressed to the top of the piano, holding me there. Holding me up. She holds me up in a state of hope when hope had left a long time ago. She laughs at my secrets and begs for truth. She stares into the face of a monster and wills it to eat her.

One kiss. And it might be the case.

Is that really true of me? If I really didn't trust myself, would I place her in such danger?

The keys press themselves now, it seems. Under the inevitability of my wants, my actions, they dance.

I won't hurt her. That much is true.

I play and play until I can see an end, one that doesn't fade out into the dark. One that doesn't end abruptly, shocking itself and its listeners. Note after note, I never tire of the consuming joy she brings me, the thought of her, this song for her.

I realise I've played all night by the time the day is here, and I have resolved to do whatever it takes to keep her the way she is. Bella. My Bella.

She is only beginning, and I want to see it all with her.

I decide to hunt before class; elk for breakfast and clean clothes to go so I can change after feeding in the forest, avoiding Esme and the others. The sun is out this morning, and as I stand in its pathway, the rays lapping at my pale skin, I flinch away from its power, running off through the trees away from its warmth. The air is clean, soothing me, preparing my lungs. I trust I'm capable of restraint now, having tested out proximity several times with her, but it never hurts to take extra precautions.

When I get to class, I'm already late and Bella isn't here. The room reeks of J.J's wretched animals, and the stale stench of humans I do not care for. I make eye contact with Siobhan and she grins at me. Her bloodied eyes have me worried. Her kind like to play with their food. Though surely they wouldn't make a move knowing Bella is mine.

The Irish coven she belongs to came to this part of the world once we had already settled here, and Carlisle seemed pleased at first, until their promise to hunt out of area became a broken one, and a few townspeople went missing.

Still, I doubt such an attempt would be made on Bella. Jasper informed me that he made it quite clear to them and the others at first meeting under the bleachers, that she isn't to be played with. He likes their company for whatever reason, or at least tolerates it, so I trust he will handle anything that threatens her safety.

It's not like Bella to skip a class or have a day off unless something is wrong, and my imagination is beginning to run wild with the possibilities. J.J has seen me now, my lateness making me quite obvious so fleeing doesn't seem like a good idea at this point. I take my phone out and send a message to Jasper.

**From:** Edward  
**To:** Jasper  
**Sent: **10 Dec 2012 10.21  
_Have you seen Bella today?_

More than worry, the overwhelming need to see her is drumming at my legs, tapping at the soles of my feet to run, run and find her. Feel her warmth, see her glassy brown eyes, and smile at the words she speaks as they fill my head.

**From: **Jasper  
**To: **Edward  
**Sent: **10 Dec 2012 10.24  
_Not today, ditching._

College. Why does he bother? Or is ditching a part of the pretence too?

**From:** Edward  
**To: **Jasper  
**Sent: **10 Dec 2012 10.25  
_She's not in class. Where are you?_

"Cullen, look alive." Funny. Or it would be. If I weren't absolutely and positively the opposite of alive.

"_Toutes mes excuses, monsieur_." I smile and assert myself. Locking eyes with J.J, he has my full attention now. Unwavering in my glare, he steps back, no doubt alarmed by the contrast of both my charm and fierceness on display for all to see. I usually try not to be so obvious but the balding man before me is testing my already strained patience.

"_Meow_, Cullen." Siobhan communicates with me in her quietest of voices and I snap, facing her in response. If either of them has gone anywhere near Bella, I will tear them apart, limbs and heads, thrown to the fire, and burn them. Burn them all.

It feels like five whole minutes have passed before she bows her head in submission. A fight would not end well for her, or her coven. And I would hate to displease Carlisle - despite their eating habits, he has been friends with the elder Irish vampires for many, many years - though I wouldn't hesitate when it comes to Bella.

I check my phone. Four new messages and a missed call, three more from Jasper and one from Alice, the call came from her too.

**From:** Jasper  
**To: **Edward  
**Sent:** 10 Dec 2012 10.26  
_With Alice. If I see her I'll let you know, man._

**From:** Jasper  
**To:** Edward  
**Sent:** 10 Dec 2012 10.28  
_Alice is looking into it._

**From:** Jasper  
**To:** Edward  
**Sent: **10 Dec 2012 10.32  
_It's not good, bro. Meet at the girls dorm._

**From:** Alice  
**To: **Edward  
**Sent: **10 Dec 2012 10.35  
_Edward, I don't see her anymore. Meet us at her room. NOW._

My chair flies across the floor, the door almost coming off its hinges. I am gone. I am immersed in a vat of life-ending scenarios. All more horrifying than the ones before it.

* * *

**_AN:_**

_The Boy doesn't know who Billy is, or Seth or Leah. Explaining to him elicits a confused-oh my god-what have I got myself into face-it's amusing, and he is amazing for continuing to get messy in this for me anyway. _

**_I would love to know your thoughts on this new development!_**  
**_Come play in my inbox. _**

_Please and thank you! _  
_samrosey. xo_


	21. Crash Into You

_**AN: I hope you all enjoyed the holidays! Christmas kicked my ass, but I'm back, and with a big one too! So big I split it into two... Enjoy! xo**_

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

* * *

**_Crash Into You_**

Billy wasn't mad at me. He was hurt. I could see it from the look on his face; holding months of words I think he wanted to throw at me but couldn't, wouldn't ever. Hurt. Hurt that I had seemingly forgotten him, and the world that made up my second family. Hurt that I didn't come around anymore. Hurt.

He told me Jake had left for military school but it seemed like a lie and when I asked him about Leah, he wouldn't look at me.

Billy began to cry then, pools of silent tears overflowing without fuss as he told me Harry Clearwater, Leah and Seth's father, had died. The air in the room died along with those words and the realisation that I was no longer a part of their family. I took myself away after the accident and most days now, I don't even think of them anymore. Sure, someone will say something or I will be doing something and a vague memory of something from our time together will invade the present as if they are still there, still here, but am I miserable without them? I've grown up, and out, and am now way too far away.

Even still, after he told me, I began to feel mad. Mad at my own father for not like, fighting my mom for his dreams, wondering if he'll die too, having only lived to be by her side. Mad at him for not telling me about one of his best friends passing away.

But mostly I was just mad at myself for running away after the accident, forcing Charlie to choose between me and them when it didn't have to be this way.

-o-

"The room is more or less the same except for... Edward, there's some broken glass." Alice informs me as I stare at the pink and black thread around my wrist, trying not to think of all the horrific ways Bella could be injured. I cover it back up, because this is not that time, she has to be okay.

I lean over a sink full of damage, unable to shy away from a scenario in which Bella isn't lying alone, and bleeding out somewhere needing my help.

"What if you're wrong? Or it's a trick. Something has gone awry and you can't see her simply because you can't. Does it have to mean a tragedy?"

"You know how it works. Have I been wrong before?" She places a hand on my shoulder, the same as Esme would. She's right, she hasn't ever been wrong. But Bella is different. Her blood is different, affecting me in ways we've never known before.

"She is... an anomaly." She is the truth to the darkness inside of me. One I have waited for.

"You know how it works." She reminds me.

"I spoke to Emmett," Jasper says, stuffing his phone back into his pocket, "He and Rose never came home. He said they're on their way up to the cabin, Carlisle is going up too, just in case." Invaded with more worry. Head space wasted with thoughts of their juvenility.

"Children. All of you. You can't just turn people into _this_. Statues and toys. Trinkets to keep." Trinkets. Bella has box after tiny box, painted in all the colours of the world, lined along her book shelf. "Yes. Let us make even more monsters."

"What happened last time was my fault, and my fault alone." Jasper looks sad, and if my very bones weren't screaming out, wishing to learn of Bella's fate, the thorns I feel constantly pricking my skin stabbing one after the other keeping me from exploding, weren't so striking, I would go to him, lend a shoulder of my own. A comfort I could give. But I cannot. Not now. Not until I know. Not until I've seen her. And if I were human, it would be all that's keeping me alive. I'm sure of it. I know it has been difficult for Jasper, increasingly so. I know he longs to be able to forget. Doomed to remember for all eternity what he and Alice caused that girl to live as for the rest of her life, but it doesn't change the fact, it only proves how dangerous it is. How dangerous we are.

"Carlisle won't let that happen to Rose." Alice chimes in, not at all helping. My patience is lost.

"I know." I do. He changed both Esme and myself without trouble. "What will Bella think? I don't want her to feel like this is something she has to become. I won't have it." It may be too late to get to the next step of her own volition now anyway. Maybe all decisions have been made for us. "Jasper, what if..." _They _took her. The others. What if they're feeding from her limp body right now? My expanding fears are only escalating me higher.

"Calm down. We'll get to the bottom of this." I feel Jasper's pull, the momentary rush of something else, something not frantic, something altogether normal that I should be trying to embrace. But then it's gone. Because it's not enough to quell the panic that something awful is happening.

"Here. It's from some kind of ornament. A piggy bank maybe." Alice hands me a rubber plug.

"She was leaving?" It's a question, because I can't know when all I have is the empty hope she left behind. I wish I didn't have to ask. I wish I could see the answers written across her face. I don't want to wonder if she left me, why she wouldn't simply tell me this was the end. If Bella's in trouble, I dread to think she would keep it from me, from everyone.

"She knew you wouldn't let her leave."

"_Alice_. You're not helping. Your half truths and wonky sight are muddy at best right now, you're just confusing me." Pursed lips angle towards me, fierce eyes begin to soften.

"I'm sorry." Her black hair, like ink splashed against the page of her white skin moves only slightly as she turns a fraction to face me, leaning into me, for forgiveness.

"Don't be. Can we just find her. Please." I beg.

"Her closet's full. Her half eaten toast is on the bedside table. I don't know, if she left bro, I feel like more would be gone, left for good, not like she's coming back."

"Jasper, do you think Liam..."

"No."

"But what about..."

"Edward, man. I told them. I warned them. They know who she belongs to."

"Well, she doesn't belong to me." Not anymore at least. Or maybe never at all.

"Not yet." Alice places her hand on my shoulder again. It's not comforting but I smile anyway.

I wonder if Bella needed money, and what it might be for. A trip perhaps, a means to leave. And if I am looking at it all wrong, maybe she's visiting someone, returning to someone, or running from someone? I don't believe there is anyone else she longs for but how much do I really know about her _before_. Before me. Before I showed myself to her. A multitude of why's and what for's swim deep underneath the surface of the water, climbing for air.

"What about Maggie?" Alice eyes me, already knowing my answer, observing my disbelief at her question. Maggie is a deviant, not at all welcome amongst me and mine.

"She's too dangerous." I close my eyes, the images of her and the blonde woman from the sports store. Brutal.

"But she'll know if the others are lying. We warned them, sure man, but I think you know as well as I do, they don't always keep their promises. And she has a friend, James. He's a tracker, he could help." Jasper is right about the truth being easy to find. If the Irish coven are hiding something, Maggie will know. And not just because she is one of them. Her gifts would help us and set me at ease when it comes to this particular brand of hurt.

"Make the call." I give Jasper the go ahead and sink into the mattress of Bella's bed. Her pretty scent is all around us. I think about trying to track her myself but it's no use. Once I get past campus, I will be assaulted by all the ways she's been, all the paths she's crossed. Each one as indecipherable from the other. Only a gifted tracker can find her without any leads. And we have none.

"It will be alright, Edward."

"As terrifying as it is, Alice. You simply don't know if that's true."

"I hate not seeing. I'm tuned in to one station, the right station at all times, and everything is clear, until it's not. And then it shifts, until it becomes clear again."

"What about Charlie? Her parents. Do you see a funeral?"

"No."

"That's good. That's something." I try to convince myself.

She sits next to me, watching Jasper as he talks rapidly into his phone. I sit next to her, watching the new world I thought I was stepping into, disappear.

-o-

Billy wasn't angry with me this morning but he was hurt, and I left not getting what I came for.

And now I'm hurt.

Hurt and alone. The Res is not the same anymore. My sun has gone, hidden away somewhere in secrets, the warmth I once smiled for doused by my failure.

I'm hurt, and no one even knows I'm here. I rub my wet face against the thick wool of Edward's grey coat but that hurts too.

-o-

"I can't sit here any longer," My fingers are wrapped tight around the door handle as they eye me in an instant, "I have to look, wherever her scent leads me."

"We understand." Alice tells me.

"You'll make arrangements." I tell them, and I'm gone.

I stand at the road leading up to the Port, I catch Bella's scent in the direction of the meadow and turn. I catch it close to where I usually park, and turn again, the rain dampening everything. What was I thinking; _I am no tracker._

I look at the rope around my wrist, tying me to her. She doesn't know I have this. I know not where it came from. But I do know where I can learn.

I'm halfway to her house, wondering if she has fallen victim to something as mundane as a home accident, while driving double the speed limit in this atrocious weather when I get a message from Jasper with details of the arrangement. Maggie is willing to question her own siblings for us, anything for Jasper, of course. I didn't think of it before but Alice must not be happy about having them involved, though it was her who suggested it. Knowing Alice can see my feelings for Bella, has seen the pictures in her mind, learnt the truth through her own way, pleases me. That she would put forth the option of using Maggie to help us - her obsession with Jasper has caused problems in the past - ensures me indebted.

Maggie is a truth seer, she has the ability to tell if someone is lying, which will be greatly helpful when it comes to her brother and sister, along with the fact she herself cannot lie due to such a gift.

James is to go ahead and meet everyone at the dorm in order to get acquainted with Bella's scent and her things. I told them to meet me here. Bella's parents home. As I pull up outside, I notice Charlie's car is parked on the street, and he is standing inside the empty garage.

I grip the wheel. The conversation we need to have is already running track inside my mind. This was supposed to happen under better circumstances.

Still, I'm ready because I have to be, so I breathe in the air I don't need but that will comfort me some in the coming minutes.

I step out of the car, taking the longest walk as the frenzy that's attempting to control me on the inside, begs me to run and be in front of him already.

The bearded man turns to me as I approach, his wrinkled fingers pressed against his forehead as he surveys me in the rain.

"Mr. Swan?" I know it's him, but he has never seen me before today, let alone met me. I don't suppose Bella has mentioned me either; the cold skinned vampire whom she may have run away from.

"Yeah, yes. You are?"

"Edward, sir. Edward Cullen. I'm a friend of Bella's. We take a class together."

"What's wrong? Where is she?" He's already worried, this doesn't bode well.

"I was hoping you could tell me? You see, Bella didn't come to class today and we had an important assignment."

"She didn't?" He turns to look at the empty space as if it will give him answers.

"Sir, do you have any idea where she might be?"

"Uh, what? Oh, no. That's not like Bells, you know. She's one of the good ones."

"Yes. She is." I step forward as if it will give me his information that much faster.

"She took the truck. She may be down at the Res."

"The Res." The Reservation. I wonder what reason she has to go to this place as I hope he will respond to my non question. Bella and I are friends. Much more than. Should I already know her reasoning?

"Yeah. We have uh, family down there. She took the truck." His face is that much paler than when I arrived. I have my best face on, my eyes soft but not sad, my posture strong but not menacing and my voice is light, friendly. He's concerned. Or at least surprised. But not by me. By Bella.

"Thank you. I'll find her."

"You will? Maybe it's best if you wait, son." He steps towards me as I back away, the frenzy is once again very present. I have to go. Now.

"Don't worry. It was nice meeting you, Mr. Swan."

"She has a bad hand, you know? Hurt it a while back. She shouldn't really be driving."

"I'm sure she's fine. Like I said." I gesture towards my car and he nods. We're done here.

-o-

The wet is everywhere now. My clothes are like, soaked through. Soaked with this nightmare. I feel like I've peed my pants. I feel silly for thinking that. I try to move but I can't feel my legs.

I worry the rain won't stop. I'm scared to worry that I might not be okay. I'm scared to worry that I'll never know why my mom hates me so much, and that the day she was supposed to start loving me would come eventually. But now it won't. I'm scared to worry I'll never know love. I'm scared to think I might never see Edward again.

I'm scared.

-o-

The roads leading to La Push are slick, and unsafe without any barriers. I drive my machine as fast as it will go, wondering whether I should have come out here on foot, forcing my search to become that much faster. I try to focus, the inevitable meeting and how I might find her, on my mind. Alice's words from earlier on today, bludgeon me as I remember the feeling, the words flashing before my eyes as they appeared on my phone screen. I am momentarily blinded by a torrent of emotions, and I swerve, but gain control again before it means too much.

_Edward, I don't see her anymore._

But I must see her again. Her rosy-red cheeks flushing the cream of her skin. Apache tears born from her dark fiery eyes, as the beauty of her round face smiles at me. The last time cannot be the last time ever.

_Inamorata_. She is mine.

_La tua cantante._ Made for me.

I inhale, the sea air is fragrant up here, the sweet burying the sweet as I catch something familiar.

I stop the car, not caring where I leave it, and stand on the edge of the point and look out. I don't see anything but wet. I don't see her. But I can smell her, her scent soaked in rain. She is here, somewhere.

Before I know where I'm going, the monster in me knows better. The road is fast beneath my feet as I make ways with speed to get to her. I hear the downfall, I hear the birds, I hear the driving of a car below and a small boy talking to the father that drives him. I hear the banging of something light against metal.

_Bang._

_Bang._

I hear a whimper. I hear struggle.

_Bang._

I hear Bella. Fighting for her breath.

_Bang._

_Bang._

A big dirty red truck sits on it's side at the foot of a steep hill. Water, so much water as the rain pools at the bottom where a girl, my girl bangs the roof with a small rock.

The sight is like a volcano, finally erupting. Like the air I do not carry gushing out all at once. My reaction is too full for even me to take. I move to grip the side of the truck and lift it, pulling Bella out, I let go almost instantly before I can do anymore damage.

She is drenched in the storm of this island. The side of her face caked in her own blood. I close my eyes as the fire ignites in my throat, my bones aching to lunge.

"Bella." Her eyes move but do not appear. "I'm here, Bella. I'm here."

Her fingers relax as she drops the rock, the stone having impacted her skin from holding it so tightly.

"Can you hear me, Bella?"

Nothing. I listen to her heart, the pulsing dance I am used to has gone, the lagging thump of her broken heart sits inside, too far away for me to mend.

"I can't..."

"Tell me, what is it? Bella, you're gonna be okay. I'm so sorry I didn't get here sooner. I've got you now."

"My legs. Can't...move..."

The rain is coming down faster now, pelting her head, washing some of the blood away. The cut on the side of her face is long and deep. I look around for something I can use, anything to prop her up with so she doesn't drown. I look inside the truck to search for something and grip the seat with both hands, pulling, I tear it from its root. I wedge it underneath her but it halts beneath me. I pull it out and look to see that it has snagged on a piece of glass, embedded into her back.

"My god, Bella..."

She doesn't speak, her body limp. I listen to her heart, thump, thump.

I take out my phone and call Jasper.

"I found her. I'm at Break Point, La Push. Bottom of the hill. Get Carlisle, hurry. And Jasper, it's bad. It's really, really bad."

I always thought it was funny. I've been to medical school twice, simply because I could, but I never practiced as Carlisle did. Still, I know enough to know I shouldn't pull it out. The shard of glass, now a weapon used by what? The Gods, the spirits, the forces of something evil to impale this girl, sweet and lovely. I know enough to know that she is dying a slow death as she bleeds out before me, the very thing that calls to me. Though, I look at her paler than usual face and all I see is my reason to exist. Not food, not the essence of our beings pulled and torn into a fight with one another. All I see are hopes and dreams wilting under the downpour and tragedy.

I hold on to the seat as if I'm holding on to her body, wishing I could; I would give anything, when I realise she's wearing my coat. Despite the scene of the girl I adore, lying mutilated in the road, a small smile takes over my face as I embrace her sentiment.

This can't be it.

"Stay with me, Bella. Okay? Help is coming. You have to stay with me so they can fix you. This can't be it. Stay with me."

Tears sting my eyes. Hot tears I haven't felt for decades upon decades. The fire that was once so red and bright, almost causing me to take her, kill her and have this be done with is nothing, nowhere to be found compared to this, my love, lying in the sea of her own blood.

The rain isn't drying out under my will, and the blood seems as if it never stops. I am helpless to her cause as I begin to pump her chest, attempting to save her life. But it's no use, and I'm convinced whatever life I push back in with my every pound, I take back out with each pass of my hand. I'm making it worse. Crushing her with my strength, no doubt.

"Edward, stop!" My siblings arrive on foot, my father behind them. Carlisle quickly positions himself between Bella and I, agony ripped across his face as he takes in the scene of his son, me, and her, my happiness, dying in a shit storm of every bad thing I have ever imagined, and took part in, back to haunt me now, on this day.

"What happened?" His voice floats around my head outside of myself for far too long before I can speak to tell him.

"Did you pull her out? Why didn't you wait?" Alice asks, and I can see it, as if the words appear in the air.

_Did you weaken her further?_

_Have you damaged her beyond repair?_

"There was no time to waste. I held her for less than a second. I lifted the truck to get her out but she was already halfway... I had to try, whatever the cost. Carlisle, she has glass in her spine."

Jasper attempts to keep my attention, his moods affecting my own. I stare into his face, letting him, any fire he can douse, any dark he can turn to light, surely won't comfort me, but I am crippled. Unable to move. And I need to move.

"What's wrong with me?"

Carlisle answers as I read the pain, transferring from me to my brother, across his face and along his body as he adapts to it.

"Shock most likely. Can you get up?"

"No."

"Edward. You need your strength." His tone is alarming.

My instincts are alerted, my body is listening as I turn to my father, "What for?"

"Edward, you have to heal her." He tells me, so calm.

"Or change her." Alice interjects. "It's unclear but I..."

"What? What do you see?" I ask, begging her to show me a way.

"No." Carlisle steps in, "You cannot inform him. He must decide."

"I won't make her like me. Bella has to choose that, she has to be the one."

"Then heal her." His fatherly voice, words laced with fear, authority and concern are a maelstrom of extra thoughts I cannot take.

"I can't. The consequences..."

"You don't know what will happen. But at least she will be alive." He is determined. And I am lost.

Bella is equally as lost somewhere in her dreams, as we, animals, decide which meal is made for whom.

* * *

_**AN:**_

_I thank The Boy, he and I had a really fun Christmas! Whether you celebrate the holidays or not, I hope there were plenty of smiles for you and yours. _

_I split this into two chapters because it felt like a good time to break ahead of what's to come. _

_Your words mean a lot, sending me a note would be love.  
__Please and thank you!  
__samrosey. xo_


	22. To Make Whole

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

* * *

**_To Make Whole _**

Threaded vines, dark and lovely. Pale skin painted by a massacre. If I never see blood again, I will be the most grateful. If I knew the thirst would never come back, uprooting any other thought I ever had, I would be the most grateful.

If I can wash away the images of today, it will be a miracle.

As Bella lay dying in the road, I couldn't bring myself to this new place.

_Heal her._

I don't often embrace the advantages, the quirks and certainly not the gifts of this vampirism.

_My blood. _

Thievery, at my very hands as I willed her body to live once more. Taking her energy to feed my own.

_Heal her_.

I could. This whole time. If I had only brought myself to this place. A place where she might exist no longer.

"_The consequences..._"

We don't know. Just as we don't know why some of us have gifts and others don't. How can Alice see the future?

I won't change her, not without a great fight, certainly not without her word.

I feel as if my bones are not mine, as if my only real reason to exist is waiting for me, and my bones are not my own to call on.

"Carlisle." I beg my father as he shakes me. Shakes me as I stare into nothing. A land of loneliness once more.

"We can make this right, Edward. But if you leave it too long, you'll have no choice but to make her one of us. Your blood has to enter her system while she's still alive in order for her to survive."

"_Carlisle_." How much of my blood is too much? How much is enough to bring her back from wherever she is lost to?

Jasper sits next to me, we are flooded, and he is determined, persistent, my brother. I turn to look at him, the rain in my mouth choking me, heavier than I remember it ever being.

"Thank you." I tell him. Grateful for his help. His strength. His loyalty.

"It's time." Alice warns me, her face telling me we're running out of that very thing.

"She won't forgive me." I tell it as if I know. And I feel as if I do.

"She'll never forget what you did for her." Alice knows. She sees what's ahead now. I wish for her to tell me, communicate it all to me somehow. But she won't. I'm on my own. "But you have to hurry before someone comes." Alice is on my back while Jasper sits inside my mind.

Carlisle holds Bella's head up, willing me with his eyes.

I sit over her, my Bella, a blurred vision of my insecurities going in might not be the best mood for this. Still, one bite and she's almost there, one bite of my own flesh and I hold my wrist to her mouth, now bloodied, torn of my own teeth, ready. I am ready.

I can't look at my father, holding us all together as I lower my seeping wrist to her soaking wet mouth. I've never shared blood with another vampire, nor human before this day and I never thought I would. I've heard others speak of its advantages, how it feels, what it does to the body and the senses. A new connection is forged. I only wish Bella were awake for the first time such a tie is made.

Though saving her life no doubt takes the place of any love token.

Bella sleeps as I press my wrist to her lips, my blood trickling into her mouth, bathing her tongue and washing away the death as it enters into her system.

I can rest again. I can see again. I can remember her again, as she was. Because she will be that again. The girl I adore. Light and lovely.

-o-

I've thought about dying, and what it would feel like a hundred times over. Sometimes I lie awake at night and see an accident, a fall, an attack. I give myself nightmares, I give myself the opportunity to live or die, each and every time. I've thought about dying, but I never knew it would feel like this. My fingertips are glass, the air runs off them like water. My eyes are closed, but I see everything. Feel everything, like, I'm feathers running along the walls of this place and I'm learning each corner for the first time. I smell clean. The air smells thin with clean, and flowers, and rain. I don't hurt anymore, which is how I know I'm no longer alive.

"I hope you'll forgive me, Bella."

These must be the words he told me as I died.

I don't know what I picked up. I don't know why I picked it up. But I remember the pain leaving my legs, like, I was drifting in a sea of warm water. But the pain in my fingers as I banged, as I hit the side of the truck, scorched through me like it was the only thing I could feel anymore. And then I heard him.

_"I'm here, Bella."_

I could let go then. I thought, if I just wait until someone comes, until someone finds me. I don't want to be left on the side of the road for days, animals and...maybe even other vampires... I would be easy prey then. Easier than ever.

I thought about Charlie and Renee, I thought about my friends, my classes and, oddly, my teachers. I thought about the meadow, and how even at night I could see how magnificent the place was. It was alive. And I was dying. And I wished for nothing but the grass, and the flowers, and the way my butt would feel damp from sitting for too long, even though it hadn't rained yet that week. I wished for Edward. To tell him that he's the most special creation I've ever known of. Not the colours of Oriel, or the Pre-Raphaelites. Not humans, plain old humans, but the way he moves, and the way he speaks, speaking my name to me like it's the first time I ever heard it. In that moment, I wanted to tell him that just getting to be with him, in any way, across the room from him, via the words he wants to share with me and the way he looks me, is enough. If I can just see him again. If I can just live.

And then I heard him.

"Bella. Wake up. You have to wake up."

My eyes are no longer closed, and I see everything. For the first time, I see Edward. He looks so... _New_. Of his dark eyes, the obsidian flows. His pale skin, like snow falling.

"I don't understand." I feel stupid, but like I know I'm not. I just know I'm missing something, and how I might possibly be alive.

I try to move, expecting wires, and needles and machines. Where the grey was, is now colour, the vivid colour and its flaws.

"Edward. What's happening to me?" I feel fine. Better than fine. Better than fine ever was. Than good. I feel amazing.

"You're okay. You're at my family's house. Bella, you were in an accident. Do you know what happened?" Edward is standing in front of me, not moving. Not moving one tiny bit. His voice is loud.

"Why are you shouting?" Like really loud.

"Bella, you were in an accident."

"Stop saying that. I remember. I remember everything. I remember ditching class, walking home. I remember driving the truck, and Billy. Oh god. Billy." The tears rush my eyes, as the emotion rushes through my body and I am heaved over, bent to the ground on my knees. "He was so sad, Edward. He hates me. He hates me and I deserve it." I cry as I try to tell him, as all the words try to come out at once. "He was so good to me. He was... He taught me how to drive, and then I broke him. He taught me how to drive and then I taught Jake how to drive but it wasn't right. It wasn't for real, just around the house. There was so much space, Billy wasn't even home. Billy wasn't supposed to be home." I cry, burning hot tears down my face, blinding me, choking me, I don't know why I can't stop.

Edward is kneeling in front of me, holding his arms out, like he wants to touch but can't.

"What are you doing? _No_." I move away, and he takes my wrist. Softly. Taking my wrist with his whole hand, finger by finger and it's holding me to the ground, to this life, to this now. The fingers of his other hand find my cheek, trailing cold glass along my skin, a sweet relief. "Edward. How... What happened?" Am I dead? Is he high? Am I crazy?

"You were in an accident, and I found you. You were dying, Bella. I tried to fix you, but you kept on trying to die." He looks so sad. My Edward. So tired. "The rain was hard, the thought of you not being here was hard. I did something. Something I hope you can understand. I had no choice. This was the right choice."

"Tell me. _Anything_. It doesn't matter. Just tell me." He looks sick. Like he wants to be sick but I don't know if vampires do that.

"I gave you my blood." He says, and I feel like I should be spinning, falling down crazy with the weight of his words. But I'm not. Though my tears have finally stopped. "As long as the human heart still beats, the blood of a vampire acts as somewhat of a healing elixir."

"Blood. Healing. Right." Okay. I get it. He gave me his blood.

I look around for equipment, blood bags, something.

"How?" I ask him, and he's still holding onto my wrist. "And why aren't you killing me right now?" This is too much. The thoughts, the selection of thoughts and words and circumstance.

_Human. Vampire. Blood. Gifts. _

_Edward. Edward. Edward._

"Orally." He says.

_Edward. Edward. Edward._

"Am I... I mean, did you... Am I a vampire?" His face is wide open, smiling a small laugh as he laughs at me.

"You're still human."

"Then why do I feel like this? Everything is so different. You're so much closer to me, even though you're exactly where you always are, right next to me. My emotions are so... I want to lie down. Or not. I don't know. I want to run, run around in the cold air. But I don't like running. Will this go away?"

"Yes."

"And this?" I lift my arm, his hand attached to me like, like he might not get to do it again."

"Yes. It will."

"Why?"

"Because my blood will leave your system."

"When?" Never. I wish it were never. I almost died. I almost died and I just want this to be over. Everything feels so hard. I think I might cry again.

"In about twenty-four hours."

"A day." A whole day. And night. Not never. "But we have now. Right? We have right now."

"Yes. We have now. But Bella, there are consequences to what we did and my family and I aren't sure..."

"I don't care." I really don't.

"You should." He looks way too worried but I don't want to think about it.

"I thought I was dead." It's a plea. He knows it and I know it. And now it's hanging in the room like a plague.

"This is dangerous. What I did was dangerous."

"I was scared, so scared that I wouldn't see you again. Can we just...be together? You and me. Can I just have you? The way I was supposed to have you since we first met. And you'll have me and we can just..." _Everything_. We can everything, because I love this boy. I love this boy with all the strength it takes to keep breathing. This love is heavy, but easy. It's overwhelming and colourful. I love this boy and his abilities out of this world. I love this boy with the whole universe. I love him.

"Believe me, I've been waiting for you, Bella." He looks bashful. "Yes. Yes." Edward, shy for the first time, and the smile he's fighting could light up the sky like stars as he brushes my face gently with his finger, not harming me, just feeling me. "I've been waiting to have you."

* * *

**_AN: _**

_The Boy gets messy with my words. He makes me better. _

_Your thoughts are like hidden abilities. I'm excited to learn them._  
_  
How do you like your vampires?  
__Please and thank you!  
__samrosey. XOXO_


	23. Flora and the Zephyrs

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

* * *

**_Flora and the Zephyrs_**

The water is like a fresh day, blinding in light. The heat drowns my body, running along my skin and away as I try to hold on, holding onto the wall. I don't feel like I was just lying in a pool of my own blood, and dirt. I don't feel like almost dying. My tummy shakes, and I wonder about the consequences. The world is too bright, and way too loud, so I stand directly under the head of the shower, hard sprays drenching my shivering form, and every time I think I can hear something I couldn't possibly hear, I turn my head to the side and let the water run along my ears.

The water is like a fresh day. And Edward is waiting for me.

After Edward and I agreed to spend the day together, I called my dad. He freaked out and told me Billy had called him. I told him I just wanted to make things better. I told him I wanted him to know I know it's my fault, and if he blames Jake, he shouldn't.

All of those things are true, but I was selfish. Most of all, I wanted to know if he knew anything about vampires. Look where that got me. Selfish.

I remember sitting around the campfire when I was younger as he and Harry told us stories. Most of them were boring but sometimes, sometimes they were scary and so deeply seeded into Billy and Jake's family, I would pretend they were real. I would tease Jacob, and he would play around, but I knew it creeped him out just as much as it did me. I don't know how I was going to like, just ask him.

_Hey, Billy. Do you believe in vampires? _

He looked sad, and I couldn't.

Before I left, I sat on Jacob's bed for twenty minutes wondering where he really was, before eventually just needing to get out of there. It's like I'm two halves of the same whole. After Billy came home in a wheelchair, that half stopped growing up. That part of me ran away and decided not to deal with it. This part, the me standing naked in Edward's shower, trying to hold onto my sanity, is trying to be free for all of those things. The fact that I drank Edward's blood today; that's the me now and I am only here because I needed it to survive.

_Why didn't he just change me? _

"Bella." Her voice sounds so close, like she's in the room with me. "Bella, it's Alice. Can I come in?"

"Um. Sure. Yeah." I don't move. I don't peak around the door to see. I just wait.

"How are you feeling?" She asks me, now standing outside the shower, like we're friends.

"Fine." I say.

"It's okay if you're not."

"What do you mean?" I ask, confused as to why she's in here with me at all.

"I know we haven't been the most welcoming. You're just one girl. In a house full of...strangers, practically." Vampires. A house full of vampires. "I'm sorry." Her voice is soft now though. Not like a feline, or a monster, protecting herself from a human. But soft, like silk.

"What for? I don't..." I feel like I'm freezing now, really freezing as I stand next to the hot stream of water running down the plughole.

"Edward likes you. Jasper likes you." She says, not at all explaining her apology. "I'm sorry I acted like such a bitch." Her voice rings out now, piercing my ears.

I want to tell her she wasn't a bitch. And she wasn't. But before I can, she opens the glass door to the shower.

I can't speak. I can't look anywhere but at her face as she looks right back at me.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't treat you as I should have, and I'm sorry you almost died."

"Okay." I nod, my arms up against my breasts, hands under my chin.

"I picked out some things for you to wear, seeing as you got all bloody and torn up." Alice is blunt. Sharp. I can tell she's used to being right about things, and right now, she actually looks sorry. I can see it in her body language, and the way she stands, she looks uncomfortable.

"Thank you." I say. Grateful.

"Alice. Is it supposed to feel like this?" My tummy shakes as I reposition myself in the tub so I don't slip.

"What do you feel?" She asks, completely unmoving from her previous stance.

"Everything." I tell her.

"Yes." Oh. Okay. "Bella, can I get you anything else?"

"Um." And I feel silly. "Do you shave?" I can feel the heat saturating my face as the words tumble out.

"No. I don't. There's no changing that." Oh. Okay. Yeah, I definitely feel silly. "I'll be right back." She says, and as she leaves, it's like watching her in slow motion. Like she's not even really moving but her body is across the room now, like she was just placed there, so she must be, still she's going so slow. And then she's no longer here. What just happened?

I step out, and grab a towel, it's white and fluffy, and feels like the softest thing I have ever felt in my life.

"Here." She's back, and I didn't even notice.

"How did you...?"

"What?"

"You were here. And then..."

She laughs. Laughs really loudly, and hands me a packet of unopened razors.

"I'm a vampire, silly." She says. Just. Like that. "Your clothes are hanging on the door."

"Thanks."

"Hey, Bella."

"Alice?"

"We're going to be great friends, you know." Before I can say anything in response, she's gone.

Alice is peculiar. She looks like a girl version of Edward. In my memory, she seemed so hostile when we first met at school. And in my room, she barely said anything to me at all. Yeah, she's kind of peculiar. Except, I hope she's right because I think I like her.

-o-

"Emmett reports he has been successful. She's transforming as we speak."

"I see. Thank you for telling me." I'd really rather not know this at all, and I fear it will weigh on me.

"Will you tell Bella?" My father asks, and how could I not? Is Bella supposed to just see her next time they're at school, at home in their dorm, and what... _Oh, hey B, I'm a vampire now, look._ That won't be fair for anyone.

"I think so." I don't want to lie to her. We're past any chance for secrets.

"Before your blood leaves her system, or after?" I don't answer because answering will only force more questions than I care to seek the answers to.

"Where do you want this?" Jasper appears at the door with a mattress.

"I'll leave you to it, son." Carlisle touches my arm before he leaves, and tells Jasper to make sure he gives us some privacy when we're settled.

The room next to mine has no carpet and no furniture. I have stacks of art, and some hanging on the walls, but nothing else. I tasked Jasper with getting us a bed. Bella will need to sleep.

"Where's the frame?"

"I'm only one vampire, oh special one." He mocks me, how playful he can remain after a morning of such chaos.

"Are you kidding me?" I'm not as playful. Relieved, yes. Nervous, yes.

"It's perfect." Alice says as she appears, looking very happy. "I have just the thing to go with it."

"How is she?" Since we got to the house, Bella insisted she needed some _human time._ Her words, not mine. Regardless, Alice wouldn't let me in the room, instructing me to get something suitable set up for when she's ready.

"Making herself presentable for you, dear brother." Alice twirls, all smiles, tip toeing as she reaches Jasper in order to kiss him. "Oh, and maybe you should fill her in on _all_ the special parts of being one of us."

"What did she say to you?"

"She was just asking questions."

As I carry the mattress up the stairs and think about what Alice said, the thoughts of all the other things I want Bella and I to be doing, drain everything else of its immediacy.

I turn on the lights in the room and set the mattress against the wall in the centre.

"You won't be needing that." She flips the switch and the lights go back off. Alice walks over to the painting hanging above the bed and drops some fresh linen, and a box on top of it. The painting is one of my favourites by Waterhouse; Flora and the Zephyrs. I'm startled by how much Flora looks like Bella, and how I never thought about it before now. "I think Bella will like these." She says as she pulls fairy lights from the box and drapes them over the painting and attaches them to the wall either side.

"They're lovely." Her voice carries loud and sweet from by the door, and it's my favourite sound, beating out any other sound in the world. It used to be Bella's heartbeat, that which linked me to her blood, and the scent which I so often longed for. But not now. Not today. I turn to see her, Bella, brand new.

Her face is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Like Flora. But not at all. I am annihilated, glued to the ground as her smile grows, and her eyes catch the tiny lights.

"Have fun." Alice whispers as she leaves us.

"You didn't have to do this." A perfect mouth, she speaks from. "But it is lovely."

-o-

He smells like the only place I want to be. His tawny hair is sticking up and I want to run my fingers all the way through to the ends and back again. I imagine my hands at his neck and over his chest. I want to rest my head there and breathe him in.

He is the only place I want to be.

"You're beautiful." His words cover me in warm. The way he says them has me believing every single one.

"You're sexy." I search his face for something not okay. I want to say these things. I want to say everything I ever thought about him.

"How do you feel?" He asks.

"That's the last time you're allowed to ask me that." This is our day to do all the things we can't usually do, and we may only ever get one.

"Just answer me this once."

"I feel amazing." He smiles at my response, and looks down. Down at the bed. At his feet. At my hands. At my face. And back at the bed. "Alice gave me some of her clothes."

"She bought new ones while you were in the shower."

"Oh." I pull at my skirt.

"I like what you're wearing." He tells me. And I can't wait for him to take it all off.

"Do you want to sit?" He asks, and he seems nervous.

I walk over to him, and he holds out his hand for me to take.

I have no doubt about whether testing this is worth it. If for some reason, the effects of what he did have worn off already, I have no doubt that I would try anyway.

His hand is cold. Not like ice, but like cool air. Like the glass I felt before, pressed against my skin. My whole palm, in his whole palm. I close my eyes to feel it more, my awareness is so new and vivid.

When I open them, I see a painting above the bed. It's a piece we talked about in class at the beginning of the semester. John William Waterhouse. Submission runs rampant through his pictures. I like them. I like how he makes women, the lines, and circles, the blush, and the eyes.

"You like her?"

"I do."

"She reminds me of you."

"I like that."

He lowers us, and we sit on the edge of the bed, knees out, our bodies turned into one another.

He lets go of my hand and his fingers play at my wrist. I look up to see his soft eyes, they're like, melty, deep and comforting.

Slowly his fingers dance along my arm and up to my shoulder, the sheer sleeves of my top tickle my skin as he runs past them and into my hair.

"You feel nice." I tell him. His eyes go wide, he seems surprised.

"Bella, I want to try something..."

"Okay." My voice feels like barely a whisper as his face moves closer to mine, and I feel like I should repeat myself but I don't.

"Don't move..."

The air around me, moves us, keeps moving us as I try to stay still. The bed beneath me, inviting us. Edward's mouth, parted.

"Be very still..."

The sound of his need vibrates through me. The weight of this lust is heavy and sinking. _Lift me, so lift me. _

He's lifting me.

His lips to mine. Pressing themselves right to my heart.

He's lifting me.

My feet don't feel me. My hands don't hold me, I am lost to this kiss.

His hand in my hair, woven like flowers, soft flowers that smell free.

Harder. His lips are pressed harder now.

Breathe him in. I can't not.

_Your wet mouth, I can't not._

I grip the front of his shirt and pull him closer. I want to be kissing him forever.

I want to be kissing him forever.

"Bella..." He seems breathless, though he doesn't need air.

"Don't stop." I beg.

He nods. And I pull. He presses. And I open. He kisses. And I love.

He kisses. Don't ever stop.

I would give anything.

Just don't ever stop.

* * *

**_AN:_**

_The Boy kept quoting this chapter to me, teasing me. It was both embarrassing and adorable._

**_To see the awesome picture I found to go with this chapter, visit my blog samroseyfiction . wordpress . com  
There are also images of Flora and the Zephyrs, if you want to check them out._**

**_Oh, Lumina is up in the Poll of the Week at The Lemonade Stand, along with lots of great stories, so go and vote for your favourites! tehlemonadestand . net_**

_So, how do you feel? I'd love you to come and leave a note, let met know. _  
_Please and thank you! _  
_samrosey. _  
_XOXO_


	24. Tonight We Build A Dream On

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

* * *

**_Tonight We Build A Dream On_**

She is soft, and altogether too existing, she is irrefutable, and I feel as if my strength might break her. One sharp movement, and her kisses would cease. Kissing never excited me like this before; the sweeping of her lips on mine, it feels sublime. Kisses were just one part of something greater. A larger adventure, the pursuit of intoxication, a sequence set to a certain scene and flavour. The result always being the immense prize of one's virtue, the generosity of another's body.

Bella's body is pressed against me. We are more than okay, and she isn't dying from my touch.

Her breasts are pressed against my chest, her heart pounding like the hooves of zebras. I pull her to me, even closer than before, always closer, always more, my hand around her thigh. She is heated, and I feel every wave of it.

We lie on the mattress lost in this embrace, her mouth so willing. She tastes sweet, she tastes like girl. She smells divine, like flowers. She smells like Bella.

"Maybe we should like," she stops kissing me, but I wish she wouldn't, "make the bed first."

"Why?" I try to kiss her again but she keeps talking.

"Because I want," her lips, to my lips. I want more. Always more, "to be wrapped up with you."

I push, and she lies on her back. I shift, and hover above her. Her deep brown eyes look up at me from a place that wants this time together to be particular.

"Like this?" I ask her. Heavy eyes, full of lust.

"No. Like this." She pulls me to her, connecting us again, and she's stronger than I imagined her to be. "Can you just...lie on top of me all day?" She blinks slowly, and her lashes are like feathers, brushing her cheek. I imagine them cooling her rosy skin, flushed from the spark.

"I think that can be arranged." And once again, I find her mouth. Her wet, open mouth. Her lips are plump and pink. I want to suck the lower one into my mouth. And I do. Her tongue is gentle. I want her to lick the parts of me unseen. But I don't ask. I want to flip her over, and undress her. I am hard. Ready.

-o-

Edward is strong. Edward's hands are like strong boy hands as he pushes me to the bed. Yet, when they're on me, on my shoulder, along my tummy, above my knee, they are tender. They are caressing. They are placed along my body like nothing I've ever felt before.

Edward is hot. His skin is cool, his lips are cool, and his tongue is like heaven against my own. But Edward is hot, and sexy, and just...a boy. Above me, on top of me. Kissing me.

I want more though. I want his hips pressed to me, my legs wrapped around him. I want it all. I want him to undress me, I want him to see me. Not like before. Not like when he fell into my room. I want him to see me as if he's seeing me for the first time. And I want to see him. I want to go all the places I've never been, and then do it all again before I'm just a weak human, susceptible to stronger, more special, non-human things. I want to be able. I want to be in full working order.

I want Edward.

_Take my clothes off. Just...take them off._

"Take them off."

"What?"

"I mean. Do you want to?" I grip the edge of his shirt as if it's my life boat.

"I want to." His words are like being at sea for months alone. I was just waiting, waiting for him to talk to me. Waiting for him to touch me. This day is the rest of my hope, and I'm using it all. Using it all up on him.

On this. On us.

"Okay, kiss me again." I beg him, and pull him back down. I imagine this is where his heart would be, beating against my own.

The room is getting darker, the day is leaving. The band stands around playing, I wish there was music right now. There's only the music inside my head. The ethereal sounds of Jónsi and his bowed guitar surround me. Edward's body, surrounding me. The dark, covering me in shiny drops of light.

Fingers, dancing against cotton and sheer. The hot air, hitting my exposed skin. Edward lifts me, and pulls my top over my head. My hair falls loose against my back, and it feels nice. It tickles. His fingers tickle even more.

"You okay?" He asks me. And it makes me smile.

This boy cares about me. About how I feel.

I nod, and grab the sheet. Edward moves to sit on his knees at the end of the bed, and I shuffle over and shake it, dropping it to the mattress.

He looks happy. He looks like Edward.

"Bella..." His mouth is still open. But the words aren't coming out.

"What is it?"

He moves over to me again, his hands out in front of him.

This second lasts a lifetime. My stomach is sinking.

"Do you even know how sexy you are?"

I am stolen. Hot. Red. Flaming. Cheeks. Stolen.

"Take your shirt off too?" I nod, like he doesn't have a choice, and he lifts his shirt, pulling at the back, and up over his head.

Lines. Strong lines running everywhere.

I reach out to touch, and he watches me. My mouth is dry. My head is spinning. My tummy is no longer sinking. It shakes, shaking me from the inside.

He's perfect.

And I'm not at all able to speak. I just nod. Again. I just nod. He holds my knee, and pushes my legs aside to part them. He hovers above me, between me, against me. His lips are everywhere, at my neck, soft sprinkles of wet open-mouthed kisses at my neck. I feel tingly, tingly all over, and run my hands through his hair, and pull him to me, it feels so good. It feels so good, I lift my hips to his. He pushes his hips to mine. It feels so good. Again. Again. He hooks his fingers underneath my bra, and pulls the strap down, his mouth on my skin, following them.

He stops and looks up at me, and I find his eyes, his golden eyes, like honey pouring out onto me, over me, and he continues to pull my bra down, and I watch as he skims my flesh with his nose, around my nipple, hard, waiting, waiting for his mouth.

I lift my hips, to meet his hips.

His mouth covers me, sucking, licking, lapping at my arousal. And I think about him down there, lapping at me, down there.

I whimper.

I'm not embarrassed by the sound I make. The sound he pulls from me.

I whimper. And lift my hips again.

I run my fingers through his hair, it's so soft, it feels good. Everything feels so good, I can't take it. But I want more. I hold on tight, and pull at the strands, oh god. _Oh god_.

I feel like I might explode.

He's kissing me. His lips are smashed to mine, keeping me whole, together. _Don't let me explode_. Not yet. I want to feel him.

_I have to feel you. _

I feel him. I feel his hand at my skirt, pushing my skirt above my waist, he lingers there, like he's asking me, waiting for me stop him. But I don't. I wouldn't ever.

I feel him. I feel his hand at my panties, and I know they're damp. I don't want him to see. I don't want him to know. I shake my head, and just will him to take them off.

It's too late. I feel him. His whole hand. Down there. Cupping me, and my damp panties.

Low, quiet rumbles. Like a growl.

Edward. Moaning as he cups me.

"I want you so badly." He says. And I feel like I'm alive. Like I'm really alive to his touch, his words, his wants.

"Have me. Have me." I nod. He sets me on fire, and I need something.

Like ice, rolling ice along your skin on a hot day. A summer day. I am parched. Dry.

I moan as he enters me.

One finger.

Ice on a summer day.

Softly, slowly. Melting.

Two fingers. Ice isn't enough.

"Edward..." _Oh god. _

"Bella..."

A stare to die by. This moment, I'll live by. This day was meant to happen. Only he could make me feel like this. Only he could lift me, cool me, heat me, and sink me. Sinking into the bed, the mattress, this stare, he's watching me, watching me go crazy from his touch, crazy from his giving, more, faster. I want more, faster.

I moan, and whimper, and bite my own mouth, and he doesn't stop. Not his eyes, not his fingers, not his eyes, not his fingers.

"Oh god... I...I think..." I can't not watch. I can't not watch him watching me as I fall down. Fall down hard, and heavy, around him. Pulling him onto me, into me. My arms wrapped tight around him, breathing fast.

"Wow." I try to catch up. My body is pulsing, heaving, breathy, and tired. I'm so tired, and tingly, and warm, and... Wow.

-o-

Sleepy and lovely. She fell hard. And now my girl, she lies wrapped in sheets, wrapped in me just as she wanted. She let me show her places, this want inside of her commanding me, and I obeyed willingly, gleefully, every step, every charge, every lift of her hips into mine, asking me to take her. And I would have. I will. I hope to. But not now. Now she sleeps to dream, and when she wakes, this fairytale will be over, my blood will have drained itself from her, and we will be as we were. Separate but together. Distant, yet so close.

I close my eyes, as if those dreams could swallow me whole. I wish they would.

Pictures of another, a daring nightmare drown my bliss in crimson horror, one where her flushed innocence has left us. One where only the instinct of a monster takes over, gutting her from the inside out.

For one moment, until I open my eyes, she is like me. The same. The same temperature. The same strength. The same power. And we could lie wrapped in sheets forever.

I open my eyes to the dark. Only the shadows of my thoughts play along her skin in bloody lines, drawing themselves to points of no return. Her skin is luminous. Her life, so fragile.

I am spiralling. I am caught. I am left alone in the shadows while my human lover lives on, and I do not. I am stuck, and I am sad and sick of it. I am selfish. I am hoping. Hoping she wishes to stay locked in a life of existence. I am selfish, wishing Bella chooses to be like me, to love me, to never leave the sheets, because I don't want to. I want to wrap myself in creamy skin, and brown, brown, silky brown. She smells divine, like flowers. She smells like Bella, lying in bed next to me, and I don't ever want it to stop.

* * *

**_AN:_**

_The Boy giggled and swooned like a girl pre-reading this. He's my Edward. And he makes **me** giggly and swoony...like a girl._

_Thank you for your support, I appreciate you!_

_samrosey._  
_XOXO_


	25. Tracking Time

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

* * *

**_Tracking Time_**

"It's not the same now. Nothing is the way it was before. It's better. It's all so much better. And it all means so much that, out there... It doesn't mean as much anymore. I feel like I'm living on the outside looking in and... I'm not sure what being out there, in the world is supposed to be anymore. Because you're here, and I'm here. And if I leave, if I go back to the same room, the same classes... I don't know, maybe I'm not explaining it right, it's just...nothing is the same now."

"_Everything_ is different. I get it."

"So how do you do it? Go back to normal."

"You don't go back. You go somewhere new."

The room is lighter now, the blue fog is attempting to lift; trying to bring about the day.

"Edward... You're half a world away." He's lying away from me, propped up on an elbow. Not touching me. Not anywhere near where I want him to be.

"I'm right here."

"It's gone isn't it? Your blood, it's not..."

"No. It's not."

"Somewhere new, huh?"

"Somewhere new."

I feel brilliant, and brand new. There's an excitement running through me, but... I also feel mad, sad, and utterly lost. I don't want to hold it all. I can't even hold myself up but I'm walking. Walking through Edward's house. Walking to the car. I'm walking. Thinking, always thinking. But my mind is one track, all the tracks and I can't stick to any of them. The car does. It takes us back to campus. It takes us back, and he's right. I was right. It looks nothing like it once did.

My room is empty. I miss Nettie. A note on my bed, says she misses me too. She has a test today, and she will be in the library all morning. Edward tells me Alice has plans to pick her up later. I ask him if she knows. She doesn't. Not yet.

"I should tell her. If she finds out I knew before..."

"Rose knows."

"What do you mean? How do you know that?"

"Emmett told her. He doesn't really do complicated."

"What is that? _Complicated_."

"He would never have had plans to be with her, and have her still be in the dark. He would have always been upfront with her."

"But..." No. It's not like that. _I'm a vampire. Wanna go on a date? _Just_. _No. How did he know she would be okay with it? It's not that easy.

"There's something else, Bella. She's with him now. She's been with him for two days."

"So. She gets it. I thought this singer thing was rare? Look, I don't think you have to worry."

"I'm not. Bella, _stop_." I'm pacing. Pacing and I didn't even know it.

"What?"

"Rose is in transition."

"Trans-ition."

"Do you understand me?"

I don't know what I think really. _Rose is in transition_. Just like that. Hello, hi, we just met. Let's be forever. I haven't even... And then I look at Edward, and I kind of just feel like I'm supposed to be angry. I kind of feel like I'm waiting to react.

"Bella. Do you understand what is happening to Rose this very minute, as we speak?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"Are you upset?" Because he looks upset.

"Why would I be?"

"Edward."

"Aren't _you_?" He asks me.

"Not for the reasons I think I'm supposed to be."

"And they are?" Edward is frustrated. He's frustrated because he can't read me. He's frustrated that he's not getting my answers any faster than this.

"I don't imagine it would seem easy telling me. She doesn't know that I know. So why would she? And... Obviously she knows you _are_... And Jasper, and Alice _are_..." He gestures to me. Like it's the first time I've ever seen him do something so...human. He wants more. More words. More reasons. More feelings. "I know what _we_ have. It's not the same as what they have. So..."

_I know what I want. I know what I want. _

"I wish I could touch you." He always seems to stun me, stunning me with his words, like I don't know they're coming. "I wish I could hold you, and bring you here to me. I wish I could touch you, just fucking touch you, dammit! And I haven't stopped wishing it, not ever. And after last night..." He is honey. He is honey being poured over me. Warm, and sweet. Filling me with happy.

"I wish too." I nod.

_I know what I want. I know what I want._

"Tell me what you're thinking."

"You know I want that too. All of it." I tell him. Because I do.

"No. Tell me about last night."

"I can't. I mean... I don't know if I can. I don't know if I can tell you how it feels to wake up. How it feels to be held to the earth by one thing. To be filled with a complete sense of... _This_. This is what I want, and I have it, _had_ it...and I don't ever want it to end. So maybe let's not let it end. Bottle you up, and drink you whole. Over and over. And... Can I do that? Can I have more? I mean... Why can't we? I'm okay. _See.._." I sit beside him on the bed. My bed. Cold and alone in this room. It doesn't feel like mine anymore. I want to hold his hand. I want to hold his hand to my heart so he can feel it dancing, banging. "Listen... Listen to my heartbeat. I'm okay. I'm fine. Nothing bad happened. And I just want to have what we have. I want to be what we are _every_ day. Can we? Can I have _more_?"

I'm afraid. I'm afraid of the way he doesn't move. His eyes don't go wide. His breath doesn't hitch. He doesn't hold me. He can't. He doesn't take my hand in understanding, or consolation. He can't. He just...looks at me. Into me. Through me. All along me, and over me.

"Say something." I beg.

_I know what I want. I know what I want. _

"I will have to speak with Carlisle."

"You will?" He will. He wants to. He doesn't think I'm crazy.

"Yes."

"But you _want_ to? You want me to...have more?"

"Yes." He's still looking. Still. Looking.

"Okay. Good. Phew."

The moments begin to tick as we sit. On the edge of my bed. We just sit. He's thinking about what I just said, and I'm thinking about what Carlisle will say. He's also thinking about what Carlisle will say. And I'm really just mostly thinking about what to say now, and it just won't come out.

_I know what I want. I know what I want. _

So why didn't I just say it?

I want more blood. It would be easy. To drink more. Be a real girl. A real girlfriend with boyfriend things. I want to feel him the way he felt me. And I want everything to keep changing yet staying exactly the same forever, and ever.

So why did I ask to have more blood?

I want more. But I could be like Rose. I could be like him. Like Edward. I could be real, forever, and ever. Me and him.

-o-

"I'm going to leave now." I tell her.

"Why?"

"Carlisle." She is so animated, it's deafening.

"Oh. Now. Okay. Yeah. Go."

Bella leads me to the door and turns, her back pressed against the harsh white. Her bottom lip is between her teeth, and I want to take it and be lost. I want to lose myself in her beauty, her charm, and the softness of her shape. I step forward, holding her between where I stand and the ugly door.

"I'll miss you." She says, and I lean in, hovering above her, resting my palm next to her head.

"I miss you already." Your kiss. Your whimpers. You bare breasts in the moonlight, shining in through the window. Yellow and white dancing in your lovely brown.

"Kiss me." She says, her mouth just seconds away from mine. Her breath is like the sea. A wave of Bella crashes against me, toppling me, drowning me.

"Close your eyes." I tell her, inhaling, breathing her in just to breath out again. I want her to feel what I feel.

"Kiss me." She whimpers. Thump, thump thump. Rapid, and brutal.

"I am." I whisper. Thump, thump, thump. Hypnotising, she's brutal.

My girl is calling, pulling hard at my dead heart. Willing it back to life, she is hoping we can truly live now, and I don't think about anything else. I don't worry about anything else, or wonder about the consequences tying me to tragedy for an eternity. I don't want to wait so I am choosing. My decision is made, and I do not hesitate. I plunge, wreaking havoc; this girl and I, we are wreaking havoc with the conventions. We're changing the lore, sculpting it to make _us_ happy. We are taking regardless now. I am taking something I shouldn't be allowed to have. So I take my wrist, my flesh between my teeth and bite. I watch her chest rise, and fall. Rise, and fall. We can be one, together in every way. I want to be kissing her, having her, consuming her, again and again. She feels it, I know she does, this degree of want, need, this fascination.

I'm not certain if this way is the way forever. I only know what I see in front of me. My Bella, and I would do anything for her.

I do not wait, and I do not ask. I have by giving, giving my wrist to her mouth, I watch. I watch the blood red lust as it bleeds onto her lips. She parts them to taste, and opens her big eyes, answering me. There's only one answer; she's drinking my blood. Feeding from me, she is bringing us back to life once more.

-o-

I push him onto the bed, and it feels like in this moment, I can do anything with his blood rushing through me. The light is back, the water, and the glass. But I do not shake. I do not freeze before I decide. I throw him onto the bed and climb on top of him.

"I don't want to go back."

"You don't have to." He promises me.

"Don't make me go back." I say it again.

"We'll make new rules." He promises. And I don't know who's rules he's referring to. Carlisle's rules?

"_Stupid, stupid. We should have never gone to them for help."_

"What?" I ask. "What did you just say?"

"I didn't say anything. Are you okay? Bella..." He shakes me. But I can't hear him.

"_He will be here any minute. He is excellent at this, Jasper. This is it for him. We have to go. Now." _

"Don't you hear that?" I look at Edward and see that he's listening now too.

"I think I can hear Alice." I whisper against his face.

"They're coming."

The door swings open, and everything is in slow motion, like before. But not really, because they're here and I didn't even see them walk in.

"Alice, I heard you. I could hear you before you even... What's going on?"

She won't look at me. Jasper won't look at me. Edward isn't looking at me. They're mouths are moving, they're speaking, and I can hear it but it's just noise. Loud, chaotic noise.

My head hurts, I'm spinning. I'm exploding. I'm think I'm blacking out, and I can't make out any of it. Just tell me. Just tell me what's wrong before I go. Before I go to sleep, just give me this. What's wrong with me? Is it Edward, because we touched? But his blood...I... I feel sick.

I run to the bathroom and wait. The too-white shine of the bowl is blinding me. I'm vibrating, holding on tight, too tight, I'm vibrating. I don't like this.

"_Edward_."

He's here. He's here, but Alice is the one holding me, stroking my hair.

"We have to leave. You'll have to run with her." She tells him.

"Not like this. We can stay. Sort this out, end it here."

"You think we can win a fight, like _this_." I can hear Jasper but can't see him.

"Three against one." Edward says.

"Why are you fighting?" I ask them.

"We're not." Alice says, and lifts me up so I'm standing, and pushes me towards Edward. "It's too late. They're here."

* * *

_**AN:** _

_The Boy makes me better, and talks me off the ledge when I need him to. Which is often. _

___You're all lovely._  
Be gentle with me. I'm a delicate flower. 

_Please and thank you! _  
_samrosey_  
_XOXO_


	26. I Dare

**The names are not mine, the rest - is.**

* * *

**_I Dare_**

_I wake to him tracing circles on my wrist, it feels real. More real than I've ever known, like flutters against my skin, like the butterflies in my tummy. His eyes are soft, almost brown like mine. The sun shines on us from the window. He looks into the light and smiles._

_"You're so beautiful, Bella. You're so perfect."_

_I smile in return only for his to fade._

_"I'm sorry I couldn't save you. But you're so perfect."_

_I try to speak but can't. I try to pull at him but he's too strong. I try to breathe but it burns, it burns like actual fire. Fire in my throat, fire in my eyes. Flames licking at my skin. I can't see him anymore._

-o-

"Where are we going? Edward, please."

"I'm taking you away from here, Bella."

"Why? Who is James?"

The endless trouble, insurmountable obstacles. Her choices limited to becoming an addict, addicted to my blood, addicted to me, or death. Death by not dying. Not dying ever. Knowing she will see everyone she has ever cared about die before she does. Knowing there won't be a happy family in her future. Knowing she can never move in any other direction than this. Time will stop as it continues on, forever. A pain almost unbearable.

"You were gone. In harm's way. Maybe even dead. Alice couldn't see you. I went to your house, Bella."

"What are you saying?"

"James is a tracker. Skills like no other." He will find us. It's simply a matter of when, and how much time we have left until then. "We went to him for help. Jasper had him visit your dorm room, get familiar with your things, catch your scent."

"But you found me."

"But he watched it happen. The blood. Your blood was everywhere. I..." I love you. I love you, and it was only because I love you that I didn't destroy you.

"And?"

"He's been watching the house. If it weren't for Maggie and her infatuation with my brother, we would have been blindsided."

"What about Alice? Didn't she see this coming?"

"Alice's visions are only the product of decision-making. If he hasn't decided to come for you, she doesn't see it."

"So he was just watching, waiting...for me? He was waiting for me."

"I won't let him hurt you."

"But he's the best at this?"

"Bella, listen to me." I look between her face and the road. "I won't let him hurt you. You're it. You're mine. You are my life, making my own worth living."

"What are we going to do?" Her touch is sweet, soft, warm. She runs her fingers the length of mine before lacing them together. It means so much, this small thing. It's beginning to mean more to me than I thought possible.

"Emmett has taken Rose to the house. We can fight. I'm taking you home with me, Alice has a plan."

"You said you didn't want to fight." She squeezes my hand in hers, turned completely in the seat to face me.

"I would fight for _you_. For my family. I would do anything to keep you safe, you have to know that."

"I do. I think I do."

"How are you feeling?" It hasn't gone unnoticed that she suffered less than desirable effects after taking my blood again.

While it seemed her body was fighting it, her senses are only growing stronger, momentarily falling into my world, she was adamant when we left that she was fine.

"I'm fine."

"Bella." I try to convey the seriousness with my eyes. This is dangerous. And we were reckless to have exchanged again. "Please be honest with me."

"I am. I feel fine. I'm hungry though, like starving. It's weird. I know I shouldn't be thinking about food right now, people are hunting us, hunting me. But I feel empty. I feel hollow."

"We'll get you something. You'll feel better."

When we arrive at the house, Carlisle and Esme greet us in the driveway. They've been feeding. Esme looks concerned and tilts her head ever so slightly, wanting me to follow her alone. I take Bella to the kitchen first to see what she can find. We don't eat for sustenance but we enjoy the flavours of many different choices. Mostly fluids, mostly alcohol. Emmett likes cake. Esme likes the frosting, and Alice likes liquorice. I'm not sure what she will find, but the sugar will do her some good.

"You're worried we won't win." I tell my mother as she sits at the piano.

"I am less concerned about our efforts, more concerned about your will to keep her human."

"Maybe I'm not anymore."

"No?"

She rarely questions me. We read each other so well, it's as if we can hear each other without speaking sometimes.

"I have decided if it's what she wants, then she will be one of us."

"But she hasn't expressed as much."

"Not quite."

"Then ask her." Esme is soft, kind, caring, always thinking about what's after next. But she is fierce, she is forthright, and she would do whatever it takes to keep us all together.

"She drank from me today."

She doesn't flinch, she is unsurprised. She doesn't speak, moments passing by.

"Well then."

"Well then?" I ask. She's hiding from me.

"Feed her, Edward. If that's what she wants. Show her what it is to be like us. She will crave it soon enough."

"What does that mean? What do you know?" The thought of her keeping information from me, from us, feels like stealing, feels like pain.

"What are her symptoms, after she drinks?"

"She was fine the first time. Nauseous earlier today."

"The _other_ symptoms, dear."

Bella was aware of everything after I fed her, lying in the street. Today she was strong, today she could hear Alice from down the hall, through the wall, she could hear her voice as well as I could.

"What are you saying? She's slowly becoming one of us?" That can't be possible. I thought there was only one way.

Esme looks at me. Looking at me, she smiles.

"All you have to do is keep letting her drink."

"No. Not like this." Not without her knowing.

"Don't be silly, Edward. If the tracker gets to her, what do you think will happen? Changing by feeding is quicker. A lot quicker in the moment. Instead of three days of pain, it will be mere moments."

My mother was asking me to lie. Asking me to betray Bella. If she knew what I know, if she knew that I knew it and she did not. Would she still want this? Would she still want me?

_"I do. I think I do." _She had said earlier. As if there was still some doubt about how I feel and what lengths I would go to for her.

-o-

The house feels empty. I hear no voices, not even whispers. I hear no movements, not even footsteps.

I found some crackers in the pantry, and milk in the fridge. I've never seen Edward eat human food.

My head begins to fill with images of him drinking blood. But not from an animal. From me. I put the glass down, and wait, the nausea rolling through me like waves. Edward biting my wrists, my neck. Edward drinking my blood. I feel hot, I feel breathless. The nausea is replaced by something feverish, something gripping, something that makes these crackers in my mouth taste like cardboard, this milk smell rotten.

I slip off the stool that was holding me up and run through the rooms, trying to find Edward. I can't find anyone, I can't find him. I start to panic, and press my hands to my chest, my ribs trying to push it away.

Concentrate. Breathe.

Focus. Just breathe.

_"You take Alice and J, wait for my signal. Siobhan, the elders will be out of practice. You got'em?"_

_"I've always wanted to know what Carlisle tastes like."_

The panic subsides. The fear creeps in.

_"I'll take the girl. And Edward._

I'm about to shout, call for Edward when I realise if I can hear them, they can hear me too.

I run again, running from room to room when I push the double doors to the library, open. Edward and his mom turn to face me.

I point outside, jerking my hand out towards the window.

I mouth something but they don't get it.

I try again, and Edward walks up to me, and holds me by the arms.

"Bella..."

"Sshhh." I shush him and close my eyes as a loud crack, glass breaking everywhere, shocks me.

Edward pushes me to the ground, and moves without moving. Flying across the room to where his mother is. Except, she's not there anymore.

"What did you see? Bella, who took her?"

"I don't know. I couldn't see. I can't see you when you move. I closed my eyes, Edward. I closed my eyes."

I think I'm going to cry. I think I'm in over my head. I'm thinking I'm stupid for falling in love with a vampire, when Rose comes running into the room, Emmett behind her.

"Rose!"

I jump up, my arms out, but Emmett stands between us.

"Not a chance."

"What? Let me past. Rose!"

"It's dangerous for you right now, Bella." Edward holds me by the arm, and I feel stupid even still. More so. Weak. Helpless. That's what I am.

Human.

"She has to get used to you. She has to learn to be around you now. She has to be able to control herself again."

I can hear Rose breathing. She sounds like she's dying. She sounds like an elderly lady, sick from an incurable disease, moments away from death.

"I miss you, Rose." I say. My voice is sad. I feel helpless.

She moans from behind Emmett and jumps on his back. Growling. She's growling at me.

She looks like an animal. Her hair covering most of her face, except from her eyes. Her eyes are red. She clings to Emmett for support, for life. Or maybe death. I'm not sure.

"You can do this, Rose. It's me. See." I smile as if it will help. "You're the strongest one, you know. I always thought so. So quiet, but always ready to attack. Attack anyone who didn't play nicely. Remember the first day we met? That guy Mark, or Mike kept trying to talk to me, and when I didn't want to give him my number, he called me a bitch. Do you remember what you did? You kicked him. You kicked him in the knee. I know it sounds stupid, but... But you are so strong, fearless. You don't let people take what they want, and you are always there, waiting to step in. I love you, Rose."

Edward's arms wrap around my waist, his head resting on my shoulder. I think he might cry. I press my face into him, wishing I hadn't brought him so much pain.

"We need your help." He says to Emmett. He says to Rose.

"She doesn't know how to fight." Emmett's face is unreadable. His stature massive, telling me everything I need to know.

Rosalie growls again, and kicks her legs against him.

"She wants to try." I say. As if I know.

"We have to move." Edward says, spinning me around to him. "Bella, you need to drink again."

"Now? Why?"

Edward looks past me at his brother and my friend. I sense he wants this to be private. But there's no time.

He leads me over to a piano, and sits me down. He joins me, and I search his face, searching him for something other than fear. He looks so scared.

"You will find her. They don't really want Esme. They want me. They won't hurt her." I don't think. I don't know what to say really. I feel terrified, I feel pumped.

"How do you feel?"

"Stop asking me that."

"Bella, please." His voice is stern. Like a teacher. Like his dad. Where is Carlisle?

"I feel normal. Better than normal. I... I heard them, outside. It's becoming clearer. But I still feel empty."

"Does it hurt? In your throat, or in your stomach?"

"Not really, just... I don't know what I want."

"You want my blood." He says, his eyes softening. "I'm so sorry."

"I don't understand?"

"You're becoming dependable on it, beginning to crave it. Did you find any solid food in the kitchen?"

"Only crackers, but..." They tasted horrible. I felt repulsed. I couldn't stop thinking about Edward, feeding from him, him feeding from me. "Oh." I nod.

"I didn't know. Not until now. If you drink more, you'll become more like me," he turns his head to look at Emmett and Rose, "more like us."

_I know what I want. I know what I want. _

"Am I dying?" I ask him.

"You're changing."

"So, I'm dying. I'm becoming like you. Less human." Dying.

He looks hurt. Hurt like when he saw Esme was gone.

"Come on, bro. We need to move." Emmett says, watching us. He hears everything.

"What will happen if I don't drink?"

"Honestly, I don't know. If we wait, and you decide not to, I imagine it will leave your system just as the first time but you'll still crave it, like a drug."

_I know what I want. I know what I want. _

"No."

"No, you don't want to drink?"

"I don't want to wait. But not here. Take me upstairs."

He looks back at Emmett and Rose. Emmett nods, letting us know he _will_ wait.

I know we have a plan. I know people are being taken. And I know James is outside. But if he's not coming in, then we're not going out. Not like this. If I can just be that much stronger, more aware. I can help. I can help get Esme back.

Edward lifts me up just by pulling at my hand, strong, in a hurry. We find our way to the bedroom, to the place he made me feel a thousand feelings, to the stars in the wall, and the sheets that smell like both of us.

I walk over to the bed and kneel on it, waiting for him.

"It wasn't supposed to be this way."

"What way would have made this better? What way would have made this..." I don't know the right words.

"I would have waited. Waited for you to want this for the right reasons. We would have dated first, at least try to be normal. We would have fell in love beneath the stars, I would have..." He stops talking, and kneels in front of me, taking my hand as he positions himself. "Bella..." His eyes are liquid gold. His face takes my breath away. I never knew that was real. I never knew I could look at someone and just have to have them, have to be with them or I might die. That's what this feels like. Like if he went away, I might die. I lean into him, my face in his chest. I try to get closer as his arms wrap around me, like I need to be inside, I can't get close enough.

Edward runs his fingers through my hair, and kisses my head. He leans back, and they find my face. My eyes meet his, and there is something new, something new every time.

"Bella Swan, will you kiss me?"

His question surprises me.

I answer by reaching for him, pressing his lips to mine, his soft lips that beg for mine to part. I do, and he thanks me with his tongue. I am high, and he is heaven.

I grip him, and climb into his lap, my legs wrapped around him. My fingers in his hair.

I kiss him for life. He kisses me back.

He places his hands on my wrists and pushes me away gently.

"I love you, Bella."

I've thought about how this might feel. This love. How he might say it. How I would say it back. I thought I might cry. I thought I might laugh, nervous. I thought I might definitely cry.

This is none of those things.

This is powerful, pulling me in one direction by a million magnets, and I can do nothing but go, relieved in some way.

"We did fall in love beneath the stars." I say, turning to face the lights that Alice hung for us. The very ones that danced in his eyes, and along his skin as he lay above me. "I love you. I love you."

Because I do.

"Are you ready?" He asks me.

And I am.

I'm ready to become like him. I'm ready to love him, to fight for him. His family, and my friends. I'm ready to become like him. I'm ready to become like me.

* * *

**_AN: _**

_The flames licking at my skin belong to The Boy. _

_Hope you enjoyed the chapter!  
Please and thank you_  
_samrosey. _  
_XOXO_


	27. Becoming Bella

_**The names are not mine, the rest is.**_

_**AN: **The penultimate... _

* * *

**_Becoming Bella_**

The sky is really close. Like, all the way here. Right here, just above us. I don't know who's in the room, and who's not anymore.

I drank from Edward.

Cold, and easy. I felt like I was finally getting the drink I had been dying for.

He kisses me. His tongue against mine. The last drops of him still there, lingering between us.

He said he couldn't wait for us to be safe.

He said he was sorry.

He held my hand as the room grew warmer, grew hot. He held me down as the paint felt like it was peeling off the walls and burying me.

_"I'm suffocating." _

_"I can't breathe." _

I had said.

Then I heard them. Voices. So many it seemed, all at once.

_"It doesn't make sense." _I told him.

But when I pulled him closer, there was nothing but my heavy arm, and my lonely hand.

-o-

I fell asleep. I think.

Edward's back now.

"Bella, I'm so sorry. I thought it would pass in minutes. Be over quickly."

"It's okay." I try to say. But I don't really know if it came out.

"Carlisle is with Esme, she's healing fast. You were amazing, Edward."

"I wasn't here for her."

Their talking is so close but I don't see her. I don't see Alice.

"Edward." The flames are like waves now. Every few minutes, one drowns me from the inside out. My arms flailing. My legs, being held down by something, or someone.

_Who helped me when he was gone?_

"Jasper was here." Edward answers me, as if I said it out loud.

The voices are less now, but more clear.

"James?" I ask Edward.

"Don't worry. You're safe, Bella."

"Am I?" _Am I? I feel like I'm sinking into the floor, pressed between that and the ceiling. I feel hot, and cold. I feel sick, and hungry. I feel helpless, weak. But I hear things. Things that other people, that Edward doesn't seem to hear._

"You learn to block it out. Only listening to what you want to listen to."

"You're reading my mind." I tell him. And he smiles.

Is he really? I can't feel my fingers anymore but I know he's there. So he must be right.

-o-

"Easy, Edward. You have to let them go."

I feel much stronger now, but like, if I let go, I will unravel and explode. We're hunting. But I'm still hot, though Edward doesn't seem concerned. He said it's normal.

Rose says she feels hot too.

She hugged me, and said I smelled good. She smelled the same but I didn't say that.

"I'm still scared." I tell Edward, as he watches me. Him and Emmett standing together.

-o-

She tastes nothing like Edward. She's warmer. She's thicker, and saltier. She's like a dry drink, whereas Edward was wet.

Animal blood.

"I'm done. I'm going back." I tell Rose, and then I start to run.

And run.

I run past the tiny rocks, I would usually get my foot stuck in. I run up the bank, and don't feel tired. I run back down the other side, and feel like I'm flying. Like a bird. Like I'm a bird, and I can't feel the ground anymore, I'm going so fast.

"Bella!" Rose is behind me.

We run for what feels like a few more minutes, and then fall together laughing. The grass black. The sky even blacker.

-o-

"What happened with James?"

"Bella."

"Don't do that." The anger has met me already, but I know I shouldn't be this mad.

"He's gone. He won't be returning."

"Did you kill him?" I saw Esme. She was exhausted. She had healed by the time I transitioned, but I saw it on her face.

"Why does it matter?" He looks at me like I'm crazy. Like it really doesn't matter. "I left you. Again. And you weren't fine. It wasn't over. You lay in pain for hours. Hours, Bella."

"I'm okay. I'm fine now. It wasn't..."

"Don't." He stops me. "Don't tell me it wasn't that bad because I know. I know."

"I thought you were reading my mind. I thought..."

"You were talking constantly."

"I was?" I expect to blush. But don't. I feel my cheeks. They're cold. Or my fingers are cold.

"Listen to me. James liked games. But he was backed into a corner, no prize possible. He wanted to give in. Go back."

"But Esme..." He had already taken her. And done God knows what.

Edward nods. He looks sad, thinking about it all over again.

"Carlisle fought Siobhan. You have to understand, he and the elders, they are family. Or were. But Esme. And I... My siblings, we are his life. His very existence."

"I understand."

I have to call Charlie.

-o-

I stand in the mirror and see someone else. But not really. I'm still the same height. The same shape. My breasts are still soft, and my hair is a mess. I pinch my cheeks trying to bring the colour back. I was pale before but everything made me blush. I wasn't embarrassed. Just sensitive I guess. Now, I'm just pale. No blush. I look...good. I like it. My eyes are burgundy red. Like Siobhan's were. Were. Is she dead too? I realise I don't care. I realise that I'm glad I didn't have to fight, or watch Edward fight. Worrying about him is enough. Seeing him almost... Seeing someone try to hurt him. It's too much.

I feel sick.

And then I realise, it's all in my head. I close my eyes, and breathe. It feels new. Like I've never done it before, and then I stop. Just. Stop breathing. I don't need it and it feels still. Calming. Peaceful. I don't feel sick. I feel free.

-o-

"Daddy." I say. I haven't called him that in years.

"Bells. Bella! Where are you? Are you alright?" His voice is deep, thick like mud. Or maybe more like porridge.

"I'm fine. I'm sorry I've been so lost."

"Where are you?" He begs.

"Home." I tell him.

"At school? On campus?" He misunderstands me.

"No."

"Sweetheart, what's going on?" His voice is soft now, like pouring milk into a glass.

"I've been spending a lot of time at my friend's. You met him. Edward Cullen. He has brothers and sisters. Rose is here too. They all go to WV with me. I'm thinking of staying here. Saves you the money."

"What? Is he pressuring you? This kid, is he..."

"Charlie." I say. My own voice startling me. "I'm happy. I don't feel lost anymore."

"And school? You've been missing classes."

"I felt unwell. I felt unwell for a long time. I'm okay now though. I'm going to be fine."

"I love you, Bells."

"I love you too, Dad."

-o-

I follow the sounds of the piano, thinking that I should expect Edward. But I know, somehow that it's not him.

It's his mother.

"Hello, dear." She greets me as if I'm family.

"Hello." I say. And I feel young. I feel strong now, stronger every minute if that's at all possible. Edward says it is. And it's normal. He keeps telling me everything I'm feeling is so normal. I know it's not. Like right now, I want blood. His blood. Not animal blood. But his. That's not normal. Is it?

Still, I feel young. Like she's my mother but she's not.

"You're worried." She says.

"I'm sorry." I say.

"Whatever for?" She knows. I know she does.

"James." She meets my eyes. Her's are light, almost yellow. Pretty, and gentle.

"Sit." She says, moving over on the bench.

I walk over to her, and sit, my hands in my lap.

"Do you play?" She asks me.

I shake my head.

"Edward plays beautifully."

"He told me."

"Well then."

"What does that mean?"

"I taught Edward. He teaches you." She says. And I'm lost all over again. "James was an animal who had never been taught." I wait for more. Every word. Every line. "He had to be put down. No apologies necessary."

"But..." It was my fault. All my fault.

"Do you actually feel guilty?" I look at her as if she's accusing me.

"Yes."

"Do you, Bella?" I don't understand. "Stop thinking you're meant to be one way when clearly..." She turns to look at me, "You're not."

I close my eyes as she plays, listening to the keys as they blend perfectly into one another. I begin to sway, it feels good. I begin to feel, and I know it's good.

"Go to him." She whispers.

-o-

The bed is in exactly the same spot. The same sheets. The same stars. Except now, he's lying on them, waiting for me. He's staring up at them, wishing for me.

"I missed you."

"I was only gone for a little while." I whisper, kneeling down on the mattress.

"I know." He says. I missed him too.

"What now?" I ask, running my fingers through his hair. My dress rides up as I move closer.

"Now..." He matches my fingers, each one skin to skin. My thighs ablaze with his touch. "We celebrate."

"Celebrate what?" I ask, leaning over him, I lift my leg to lie across him, straddling him.

He takes each one, moving to my ass as I lean forward, nose to nose.

"You."

His kiss is soft, languid, not within the lines, but still perfect. Until it's not, soft. It's hard. And without the lines, hurried. He can't have me enough, and I can't get closer. He sits up with me in his lap, his arms around my back pulling me to him. His tongue plays with mine as I rock against him.

"Take your clothes off." He says, no longer kissing me.

"Why?" I ask, really wanting him to say it.

"So I can have all of you." He says.

_All of you._

* * *

_**AN:** _

_I'm nervous, come talk to me about it?_

_The Boy had his OMG face on for this. It's cute. And I like it lots. _

_**You're all lovely.** _  
_Please and thank you!_  
_samrosey_  
_XOXO_

_**Ps. I just want to take a sec and let you know, I started posting a new story yesterday, I would love it if you went and checked it out. Hope you enjoy! **_


	28. You Call It Madness, But I Call It Love

_**The names are not mine, the rest is. Well, except for those two lines... **_

_**AN: **The finale_

* * *

**_You Call It Madness, But I Call It Love_**

James tried to take my mother from me. He attempted to destroy my family, to dispose of our every reason. He should have gone right ahead and ripped out each of our hearts. But of course, that's why he chose her, and we all knew it. As Bella began to change, I didn't hesitate. I found James, lying in wait like the animal that he was, and I took his life from him. I ripped his dead heart from his chest, and held it up for him to see. Where my own dead heart lies, one soul beats for me. James, he was soulless. I know the difference now. I see the difference now.

Carlisle fought beside me, the most precious parts of his existence at risk, and he was relentless. I held my own, perhaps more than was needed. Still, my father stood with me, as if to bring me back from the edges of nowhere. It was simple really, letting go. Much easier than I had imagined, tearing through the restraints I had been held in for so long. So now, James is no longer, and the rest of them, along with Maggie, have been handed over to the elders of their coven. Carlisle insisted. Though, I wanted to keep on fighting.

Alice and Jasper have since gone back to school. Having newborns in the house again is no novelty for them, nor has it discouraged them in the slightest from following up on their previous affections. The ever excitable nymph that is Nettie. To go, please.

Bella has professed her excitement at having her best friend join us. Rosalie merely rolled her eyes and said nothing. If I'm honest, watching my brother with her, I see clearly that he has much work cut out for him. She is hostile, aggressive. Even when at home. Even after feeding. Feeding was a group trip for a while: Emmett and I standing by as the new vampires among us went about their carnage. Where Rose preferred mountain lions, Bella hadn't the stomach for it, opting only for my blood.

The lines, they paint lovely and wicked as they course through her, flowing uninterrupted along her skin, leaving a path for me to follow. My blood mixing with her own. She sings to me for more, and together we feed from each other, our lust no longer being something we have to fight.

-o-

"Charlie says my mom asked to see me, but honestly, the thought just makes me angry, and I'm afraid making the trip... Well, I see it ending badly."

"It would be wise to wait." Edward sits at the piano, hovering over the keys. I'm waiting for him to play, he's waiting for me to stop waiting. He doesn't want to disappoint me. I feel like since the transformation, I know things. I understand the abilities that come along with this new life. The strength in my senses. But sometimes, I don't have to wait for his answers. I just know. As if he has said it to me already, before he speaks. It's not as clear as knowing someone's thoughts, or how I imagine reading their mind might be. But it is getting stronger.

"I know, you're right. I feel guilty. And I know, I know, everything I feel is multiplied by a thousand right now, but...I'm starting to feel like it's right. However heavy it has become, however much it's not really real, it feels right."

"Jasper's bringing your things from campus. Perhaps you should write to her, better still, paint something. Less words, the better."

"I know what you're waiting for. I don't know how I know. I just know you're becoming clearer. Everyone is becoming so clear to me." He's talking about my mom still, I'm talking about the piano.

"You're a reader." He says, simply. Like he hasn't just realised this. Like it's not some revelation.

"What?" I ask, and he is watching me now. His eyes are a dark redwood colour, like my own. My blood stills him. His blood, in me, causes a frenzy. I'm catching up, they all tell me.

"Esme is a reader. I am a reader. Though, sometimes I don't feel as if I can see anything clearly."

"Like Alice, and the future?"

"It's not a gift. Not exactly. More like a heightened ability." He's back to the keys. One soft note, followed by an even quieter one, sounds the room like tiny drops of water.

I feel more confident since the transformation. Like knowing he won't reject me makes anything I have to ask him, anything I want, okay.

My hands find his shoulders before I can even think it. His fingers begin playing along the whites and blacks of a song I don't know. He is warm to me now, somehow like a fire beneath my skin, I rip his shirt from his back, and he stops playing momentarily. As he begins again, my own fingers pull at his hair, my mouth at his neck. I don't drink, not this time. I find sweet relief in all the tastes of him. But now, it's time. And I am ready.

-o-

She rips my shirt, and I know she doesn't want this to come easy. She finds power in exploring the edges of what she can and can't have. Though, I'm certain I will give her everything.

The song underneath my fingers no longer makes sense, her body is the only thing I see as I pull her to me, and lift her onto the piano, the keys crashing in ugly yet perfect harmony.

"Kiss me." She begs, and I take her mouth, hungry. My teeth slip over her lips, tasting the smallest drop of blood as I go. My tongue wipes it away as we pant for the air we don't need.

I could breathe her in a thousand times, and not be satisfied. She is delicious honey in my mouth as I rip her dress away, exposing her breasts to me. Suckling for pleasure, her fingers find no relief as they dig into my back, my neck, my hair.

I laugh into her soft flesh, my fingers spreading. She laughs as she pushes me away.

She's gone. Through the sliding doors and out into the green.

She is calling to me with much more now, body, soul, heart. The very same as mine. At last.

-o-

I don't know how fast I'm running but I know it's not fast enough. And I don't want it to be. I know where I'm going, and I know he'll chase me, find me there. My laughter falls from me like a crazy child playing hide and seek. I feel effortless. I feel alive, for the very first time.

I run into trees and they pass me by. I don't know how. My feet find rock, and uprooted branches, wet things, sharp things. I feel nothing except what they are. I feel like I'm gliding across the earth, and all its beauty, my eyes cataloguing everything, every single thing.

As I push through the clearing, I begin to slow, as if I need to in order to take in more. I don't. But it feels right. It feels like coming home. The purple flowers make me liquid, running water to help them grow. The yellow pretty makes me smile, I am the new light, easy to be me.

"Hello, beautiful."

Edward's arms are around me, the breath he knows I like, dusting my bare shoulders. He doesn't need it, neither of us do. But I like it. It's something human that I can relate to. It tells me things without words.

"I was trying not to be scared of you. I didn't want to be." I turn in his arms to face him, his hands at my waist, in my hair. "Despite what you were showing me, when we first came here, I looked at you, into your eyes, and I just wanted you to hold me. I felt like I had been waiting so long."

"I was trying not not to scare you. Too much. A part of me wanted to steal you away. The rest of me knew it was dangerous. That I was dangerous to you."

His mouth is welcome, wet, and wanting. If I were still human, he would be breaking me right now. But I'm not, I am new now, and this is heaven.

"Bella..."

"I know." I tell him. Because I need him like he needs me.

He tears my dress right off, and pulls the rest of his shirt off along with it, discarding them on the ground. I unbutton his pants as he pushes me, and we fumble in the forest, along the soft grass of our meadow, kissing and undressing. All the parts, we want to see.

He backs me into a low hanging tree, and I hook my arms up over the branch. His hands are everywhere, his mouth follows. But suddenly he stops, his lips are red, parted, and I don't want him to stop. He's just looking at me, just holding me here, against this tree, harsh, and rough.

Before I can say anything, his fingers begin to play, just like before, on the piano. Except this is me, my skin, in the light of the flowers, and the accompaniment of the animals, scurrying away, afraid of this ferocity on display, the fierceness in our calm as we finally agree to move on, moving up and in, just like his fingers as he sheds me of everything that is left.

I am open. I am willing.

I grip the tree, waiting, the anticipation ready to explode me. I'm not afraid of him, never could be. I'm not afraid of this, though I would have been. But not now, not this me, not this version of who I am in front of this boy, my boy vampire, lifting me, pushing into me, softly, slowly. I feel immense, like this moment is filling me up to the brim of my heart, and I have nowhere to put it. I close my eyes to feel it more, if that's even possible. If it's even possible to take much more, but I do, as I feel him entering me further. His hard warmth fills me, and I am lost. Lost to his stillness as we consume each other for what this moment really is.

"You don't know how long I've waited for you."

Edward spears me with his words, his actions to match. I hold on tighter still as he begins to move beneath me, pressed into me. His dick is hard, really hard, but it doesn't hurt, and it's not weird. I feel hot, so full of wanting, each time he moves into me, I am tingly for something I haven't found yet. But, I feel cold too. The leaves flying in the softly breeze, lapping at my skin, just like Edward lapping at my soul with each thrust.

He's moving faster now, and we're fucking. The branch begins to give way but we don't fall, he's holding me, pushing us against the bark, relentless as he gives me more each time. But I'm not ready for this to be over, so I push against his shoulders, feeling stronger than him, feeling like I can control this if I want to. I push against him again and he brings us to our knees, onto his back, my hair is falling into my face, along his chest, his skin is perfect under my lips. I kiss my way to his neck, and taste where I have tasted before. I want his blood. But in this moment, I want him even more.

"What does it feel like?" I ask him as I begin to move, realising that even with my power I still haven't done this before.

"It feels, uh... Bella, slow, slower..." He grips my ass and stills me. I can tell he's holding it all in, that this is hard, not letting go.

I rock back and forth, up and down, and begin to lose control.

"I don't want you to hold back, Edward. I know this is new...but you can't break me." And before I can try again, I'm on my back, fingers caught in the grass, as if I can hold on like this, as if this ground could take me. Bits of grass, and soil dirty my hands, as I feel myself digging deeper. Edward is deeper now, my legs are wrapped around him, his arms either side of my face, his eyes penetrating me with just as much force.

"I can't..." I hold him to me now, his pace is frenzied, and I can't take this fire. I feel as though my cheeks should be lit from the sounds we're making. His growls match my whimpers. I could scream, it feels so good.

The ground is wet beneath me.

The sky is clear above me.

The pressure is caving within me.

Before I can fall, before I can choose a ledge to let go of, he is grunting, and pulsing, and trembling above me.

It's over. It's finished for him. But I'm not done. I don't want it to be over.

"This is our life now. Whenever we want." I tell him. And I've never felt so full, ever.

"_You_ are my life now."

* * *

_**AN:**_

_I am in awe of The Boy. He makes it all so much better. He makes me better. _

_This has been a fucking blast! Thank you for riding along to Vampire town. It was my first time. _  
_Honestly, I don't want to say goodbye, though it fit well to end (or shall we say begin) it here. I plan to post outtakes, chapters that didn't quite fit with the pacing. They will focus on other characters as well as our main lovers. _

_You've been wonderful. _  
_I like you lots. _

_Please and thank you! _  
_samrosey._  
_XOXO_


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